SERMONS 



BY THE 

EEV. JOHN CAIKD, D.D. 

PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IX THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW 
AND ONE OF HER MAJESTY'S CHAPLAINS 
FOR SCOTLAND 



FOURTEENTH THOUSAND 



WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 

EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
MDCCCLXXIII 



CONTENTS. 



SERMON I. 

PA OK 

THE SELF-EVIDENCING NATURE OF DIVINE TRUTH, 1 

"By manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every 
man's conscience in the sight of God. " — 2 Corinthians, iv. 2. 

SERMON II. 
SELF-IGNORANCE, 33 

' 'Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret 
faults." — Psalm xix. 12. 

SERMON III. 

SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE, 54 

"Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The 
wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound 
thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it 
goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." — John, iii. 
7, 8. 

SERMON IY. 
PART FIRST. 

THE INVISIBLE GOD, . ...... . 83 

"No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, 
which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." 
— John, i. 18. 



VI 



CONTENTS. 



SERMON IY. 
PART SECOND. 

J" AGE 

THE MANIFESTATION OF THE INVISIBLE GOD, . 100 

"No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, 
which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Eim. " 
— John, i. 18. 

SERMON V. 
THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS, 111 
" I have trodden the wine-press alone." — Isaiah, briii. 3. 

SERMON VI. 

PARTICIPATION IN THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST, 138 

" Rejoice inasmuch as ye are partakers of the sufferings of Christ." 
—1 Peter, iv. 13. 

SERMON VII. 

SPIRITUAL REST, 159 

" Return unto thy rest, O my soul l"—*Psalm cxvi. 7. 

SERMON VIII. 

SPIRITUAL PROSPERITY, 181 

"Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and 
be in health, even as thy soul prospereth." — 3 John, 2. 

SERMON IX. 
THE CHRISTIANS HERITAGE, . . .205 

" All things are yours ; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or 
the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to 
come ; all are yours ; and ye are Christ's ; and Christ is God's. " 
—1 Corinthians, iii. 21, 22, 23. 



CONTENTS. 



vii 



SERMON X. 

PAGE 

THE SIMPLICITY OF CHRISTIAN RITUAL, . . 226 

"Then verily the first covenant had also ordinances of divine ser- 
vice." — Hebrews, ix. 1, 

SERMON XL 

THE COMPARATIVE INFLUENCE OF CHARACTER AND 

DOCTRINE, 250 

"Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in - 
them : for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them 
that hear thee."—l Timothy, iv. 16. 

SERMON XII. 

RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE, . 273 

" Not slothful in business ; fervent in spirit ; serving the Lord." 
— Romans, xii. 11. 



SERMON I. 



THE SELF -EVIDENCING NATURE OF DIVINE TRUTH. 

" By manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's con- 
science in the sight of God."— 2 Corinthians, iv. 2. 

The truth we receive from trie lips of another may 
either derive its authority from the teacher, or reflect 
on him the authority it contains. As the receiver of 
money may argue, either that the money is good be- 
cause it is an honest man who pays it, or that the man 
is honest because he pays good money ; so in the com- 
munication and reception of truth, it may be a valid 
inference, either that the doctrine is true because it is 
a trustworthy man who teaches it, or that the man 
who teaches is veracious or trustworthy because his 
doctrine is true. It is the latter mode of inference 
which is employed in the text. The apostle appeals to 
the doctrine he taught as in itself a sufficient attesta- 
tion of his character and credibility. The message he 
had spoken was so completely in accordance with 
reason and conscience — it so reflected the profoundest 
convictions of the human intellect, and responded to 

A 



2 



SERMON I. 



the deepest longings of the human heart, that he 
needed no other credentials in proclaiming it : it be- 
came at once its own witness and his. The fragrance 
of the heavenly deposit clung to the garments of him 
to whom it was intrusted, and rendered him " a sweet 
savour of life unto them " who received it. The lamp 
of truth was not only seen by its own light, but shed 
back its brightness on the face of him who bore it. 
By the simple " manifestation of the truth, he com- 
mended himself to every man's conscience in the sight 
of God.' 9 

That there is an order of truth, such as that to 
which the apostle refers, every thoughtful mind must 
be aware. As there are some truths which we reach 
inferentially, by a process, longer or shorter, of argu- 
ment, deduction, demonstration ; so there are other 
truths which are perceived immediately and intuitively 
whenever the mind is brought into contact with them. 
All science is based on truths which constitute their 
own evidence. At the root of all knowledge there 
are first principles which are independent of proof, 
which to state is to prove to every mind that appre- 
hends them. Follow the links in every chain of 
reasoning far enough back, and you will come to a first 
reason which hangs on no other, but is self-existent 
and self-sufficient. Examine the contents of your 
knowledge, and sooner or later you will penetrate to 
the primary strata, which, unsupported, support all 
besides. Of innumerable objects of thought you may 
be able to say why you conceive them to be true, or 
right, or beautiful ; but there are some with respect to 



SELF-EVIDENCING NATURE OF DIVINE TRUTH. 3 

which you can give no such reason, of which you can 
only say, I believe them to be true, or good, or fair, 
because I believe them to be true, or good, or fair; 
my mind is so constituted that I cannot otherwise 
regard them ; they commend themselves at once to my 
consciousness in the sight of God. 

Now to this class belong many of the truths of reve- 
lation. Of much that is contained in Scripture the 
mind of man is so constituted, as, immediately and 
intuitively, when brought face to face with it, to re- 
cognise the truthfulness or reality. As it needs no 
outward attestation to prove to the tasteful eye the 
beauty of fair scenes, as sweet sounds need no authen- 
tication of their harmony to the sensitive ear ; so, 
between the spirit of man, and that infinite world of 
moral beauty and harmony which revelation discloses, 
there is a correspondence so deep and real that the 
inner eye and ear, if undiseased, discern at once in di- 
vine things their own best witness and authority. In 
the original structure of the soul, there is an unwritten 
revelation which accords with the external revelation 
of Scripture. Within the depths of the heart there is 
a silent oracle, which needs only to be rightly ques- 
tioned to elicit from it a response in accordance with 
that voice which issues from the lively oracles of God. 
In one word, the appeal of Scripture to the unbiassed 
conscience or consciousness of man is, in great part, 
direct, immediate, irresistible. It is this doctrine which 
I now propose to explain and illustrate. As, however, 
it is a doctrine which, if unguardedly stated, is ex- 
tremely liable to misconstruction, I shall endeavour to 



4 



SERMON I. 



show, in the first place, what is not, before going on, 
secondly, to explain what is, its true import. 

I. By the statement that the truths of revelation 
commend themselves to the conscience or consciousness 
of man, it is not implied, that man, by the unaided- 
exercise of his consciousness, could have discovered them. 
In claiming for man's spirit a power of recognising and 
responding to the truth of God, we do not arrogate for 
it a capacity, of itself, to originate that truth. 

If there be an internal revelation already imprinted 
on the human spirit, what need, it might be asked, for 
any other ? If the truths of Scripture be so congenial 
to man's mind, in such exact correspondence with the 
principles of reason and conscience, might not reason 
and conscience work out those truths independently of 
any external aid] What necessity for an outward 
authority to announce to me that which, by the funda- 
mental laws of my being, I cannot help believing 1 If 
the doctrines of religion accord with man's conscience 
as the principles of arithmetic or geometry accord 
with man's reason, what need for an oracle to reveal 
the former any more than the latter? In asserting 
that divine revelation is self-evidencing, do we not 
virtually assert that it is uncalled-for or superfluous ? 

Now, to all such questions the obvious answer is, 
that the power to recognise truth, when presented to 
us, does not by any means imply the power to find out 
or originate the same truth. The range of intellect 
which enables a man to perceive and appreciate thought, 
falls far short of that which is necessary to excogitate 



SELF-EVIDENCING NATURE OF DIVINE TRUTH. 5 

or create thought. We may apprehend what we could 
not invent. To discover, for instance, some great law 
of nature, to evolve some grand principle of science, 
implies in the discoverer the possession of mental 
powers of the very rarest order ; but when that law or 
principle has once been pointed out, multitudes who 
could never have discovered it for themselves may be 
quite able to verify it. The law of gravitation was 
unknown to man for ages, till one great mind arose, of 
grasp sufficient to penetrate into the arcana of nature, 
and bring to light this great secret of her order ; but, 
now that the discovery has been achieved, all men of 
ordinary intellectual capacity can apprehend its evi- 
dence, and satisfy themselves of its truth. Viewed 
merely as what is knowable — involved in the laws of 
human thought— all Euclid is in the mind of a savage ; 
but whilst minds of the rudest cast may easily be 
educated into the capacity to verify Euclid, how very 
few of the whole human race could have struck out 
his discoveries for themselves ! All abstract science 
or philosophy, in fact, is but the evolving of the latent 
contents of our consciousness- — the bringing to light by 
observation, reflection, analysis, of those truths which 
implicitly are possessed by all ; but though, virtually, 
these truths would never become really ours, they 
would never be known at all by common thinkers, but 
for the aid which the discoveries of high and philo- 
sophic minds afford them. So again, to what is it that 
the great poet owes the power to charm and thrill the 
minds of men — what is the secret of the spell which 
his genius exerts over multitudes, but this, that he 



6 



SERMON 1. 



gives expression to their own indistinct and unuttered 
thoughts and feelings — to thoughts and feelings which, 
though none but men of rarest genius could articulate 
them, the common heart and soul of humanity recog- 
nises as its own ? Millions can perceive and appreciate 
the power, the reality, the trueness to nature, of the 
great writer's productions, who could never themselves 
have produced them. There are multitudes of " mute 
inglorious Miltons," though there never lived but one 
who could write the i Paradise Lost/ Dim, indistinct, 
nebulous, the thoughts of beauty and truth lurk in 
many a mind, but it is only the creative voice of genius 
from without that condenses and shapes them into 
visible beauty — gives to them local habitation and name 
— and so, by interpreting ourselves to ourselves, com- 
mends its utterances to every man's consciousness in 
the sight of God. 

Now, to apply this principle to the case before us : 
— It is obvious that the appeal of Scripture to man's 
reason and conscience does not by any means imply in 
man's reason and conscience a capacity to discover 
divine truth by their own unaided exercise. Here, 
too, is a case in which it is possible for the human 
mind to recognise and identify that which, of itself, 
it could not have found out. There may be, and we 
shall in the sequel attempt to show that there are, in 
the soul, latent beliefs, dim inarticulate yearnings, 
unexplained hopes and aspirations, which are to itself 
unrealised and unintelligible, till the outward shining 
of divine truth pours light and meaning upon them. 
There may be, and we maintain that there are, inscribed 



SELF-EVIDENCING NATURE OF DIVINE TRUTH. 7 

on the mind and'conscience of man, the characters of an 
unknown language, to which revelation alone supplies 
the key, and which, read by its aid, become the truest- 
verification of that which interprets them. Bring " one 
that believeth not, or one unlearned," face to face with 
him who speaks the Word of inspiration, and, as he 
listens, there will be roused within him a something 
that claims in that Word a strange affinity with itself; 
" he will be convinced of all, he will be judged of all ; 
the secrets of his heart will be made manifest, and so 
he will worship God, and report that God is here of a 
truth." In that world of eternal and invisible realities 
to which, as spiritual beings, we belong, there are 
heights too vast for human soaring, mysteries too pro- 
found for fallen humanity, of itself, to penetrate. But 
though by no unaided " searching " could we " find 
out God;" though, again, the conception of a pure 
and holy moral law, or yet again, the vision of a glorious 
immortality, be unattainable by any spontaneous effort 
of human reason, yet there is wrought into the very 
structure of man's nature so much of a divine element, 
there is a moral standard so ineffaceably inscribed on 
the conscience, there slumbers in the universal heart 
a desire and yearning after immortality so deep and 
strong, that that Bible, which contains in it the revela- 
tion of God and Holiness and Heaven, finds in the 
awakened soul an instant response and authentication 
of its teachings. Divine truth, therefore, undiscover- 
able by human reason, is yet so in harmony with it ; 
inaccessible to the human mind, yet so accords with 
all its half-acknowledged principles and aspirations ; 



SERMON I. 



inexpressible by human lip, yet so expresses for man 
things which he thought but could not utter for him- 
self, — that it "commends itself to every man's con- 
sciousness in the sight of God." 

2. Again, in averring that the truths of revelation 
commend themselves to the consciousness of man, not 
only do we not ascribe to the consciousness a power to 
discover those truths, but we do not even imply that 
the consciousness in its unrenewed and imperfect state 
is qualified fully to recognise and verify them when dis- 
covered to it. 

It might be admitted that the mind of man, in its 
unimpaired and perfect state, is so in harmony with 
the mind of God, as at once to echo and respond to 
the utterance of that mind in His revealed Word. But 
the mind of man is not perfect and unimpaired. The 
moral reason has become dimmed and distorted, so that, 
instead of affording a perfect, unerring reflection, it 
breaks and refracts the light of truth into a thousand 
unreal forms and phantasms. It might be possible for 
the inner eye and ear, if endowed with all the sound- 
ness and delicate susceptibility of health, at once to 
recognise the beauty and harmony of divine things ; 
but the vision of the soul is blurred, the spiritual ear 
has lost its sensitiveness to heaven's music. How 
then any longer can the soul be regarded as the cri- 
terion of truth — how can it be asserted that the truth 
commends itself to every man's consciousness 1 Is not 
such a statement at variance with that other doctrine 
of Scripture, that " the natural man receiveth not the 
things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, 



SELF-EVIDENCING NATURE OF DIVINE TRUTH. 9 

because they are spiritually discerned ] " And if, in 
answer to this, it be said that there is a restorative 
operation of the Spirit of God on the minds of those 
who receive the truth, still it may be rejoined, that it 
is by the truth, apprehended and believed, that the 
Holy Spirit works in restoring or renewing the mind, 
and that therefore the apprehension or recognition of 
the truth must be, in some sort, prior to the restoration 
of the mind to purity and goodness. How then, again, 
may it be asked, can the truth be said to commend 
itself to an impaired, imperfect conscience ? How can 
light be perceived by blind eyes, harmony by dull or 
deaf ears ? 

The solution of this difficulty will perhaps be found 
in the consideration that divine truth exerts on the 
mind of man at once a restorative and a self-manifest- 
ing power. It creates in the mind the capacity by 
which it is discerned. As light opens the close-shut 
flower-bud to receive light, or as the sunbeam, playing 
on a sleeper's eyes, by its gentle irritation opens them 
to see its own brightness ; so the truth of God, shin- 
ing on the soul, quickens and stirs into activity the 
faculty by which that very truth is perceived. It 
matters little which of the two operations, in logical or 
in natural order, be first ; practically they may be re- 
garded as simultaneous. The perception rouses the 
faculty, and yet the faculty is implied in the percep- 
tion. The truth awakens the mind, and yet the mind 
must be in activity ere the truth can reach it. And 
the same twofold process is carried on in the whole 
subsequent progress of the soul. Light and the Organ 



10 



SER3ION I. 



of Vision, Knowledge and the Understanding, Divine 
Truth and the Spiritual Reason, grow and expand 
together. They act and react. They are reciprocally 
helpful. They are, each by turn, cause and effect. It 
is in this case as in secular studies and contemplations, 
each advance in knowledge disciplines the knowing 
faculty, and the discipline of the faculty renders it 
capable of still further advances in knowledge. With 
each new problem mastered, each difficult step in 
science or philosophy overcome, the powers of observa- 
tion, comparison, analysis, are invigorated, the mental 
habits of attention and application are strengthened, 
and thus a wider range of knowledge, a larger, clearer, 
more comprehensive view of truth, becomes possible to 
the mind. So, again, the observation of Nature both 
presupposes and cultivates the sense of beauty. The 
sight of her material glory rouses the dormant imagina- 
tion into action; but it needs long familiarity with 
her presence, long and reverent study and contempla- 
tion of her manifold forms and aspects, till her full 
splendour breaks upon the chastened eye. In the 
very act of contemplation, the contemplative powers 
are expanded, the perceptions quickened, the elements 
of feeling and of thought purified and enriched ; and 
so the whole mind and spirit of the observer of Nature 
becomes qualified for the more perfect apprehension of 
her loveliness. In like manner the powers of spiritual 
discernment, incapable at first of recognising the full 
glory and beauty of divine truth, become, by daily 
converse with it, more and more qualified to know it. 
In each act of earnest study of God's word a reflex 



SELF-EVIDENCING NATURE OF DIVINE TRUTH. 11 

process of refinement is going on ; something of the 
mind's dulness and insensibility is thrown off, and 
some new touch of spiritual acuteness communicated. 
The spiritual appetite, growing by what it feeds upon, 
becomes capable of assimilating more and more of its 
divine nutriment. The inner eye and ear acquire by 
exercise a more and more delicate acuteness and ac- 
curacy of perception ; until at last, as the result of its 
long converse with truth, the soul learns to recognise 
it with an almost instinctive sureness, and with a sen- 
sitiveness on which not the slightest shade of its 
beauty, not the most evanescent tone of its heavenly 
harmony, is lost. Thus, impaired and defective though 
our nature be, inasmuch as the truth restores and 
refines the very powers by which it is recognised, it 
may still be maintained that it " commends itself to 
our consciousness in the sight of God." 

II. Such, then, being some of the limitations under 
which the doctrine of the text is to be understood, I 
now proceed more directly to explain its true import. 
In what way may we conceive of divine truth as com- 
mending itself to the consciousness of man 1 It does 
so, I answer, first, by revealing to man the Lost Ideal 
of his Nature. 

The Gospel is, in one view of it, the disclosure to 
man of the true ideal of humanity, the discovery of the 
perfect type of our being, lost by sin, and yet recover- 
able in Christ. And whilst man, fallen and degraded 
as his nature has become, could never have found out 
that ideal for himself, yet when it is presented to him 



12 



SERMON I. 



in Scripture, there is that within him which is capable 
of recognising it as his own. For the recognition of a 
lost ideal is a mental act, the possibility of which, to a 
moral and spiritual being, it is not difficult to conceive. 
The degenerate plant has no consciousness of its own 
degradation, nor could it, when reduced to the char- 
acter of a weed or a wild-flower, recognise in the fair 
and delicate garden-plant the type of its former self. 
The tamed and domesticated animal, stunted in size, 
and subjugated in spirit, could not feel any sense of 
humiliation when confronted with its wild brother of 
the desert, fierce, strong, and free, as if discerning in 
that spectacle the noble type from which itself had 
fallen. But it is different with a conscious, moral 
being. Eeduce such an one ever so low, yet you can- 
not obliterate in his inner nature the consciousness 
of falling beneath himself ; you cannot blot out from 
his mind the latent reminiscence of a nobler and better 
self which he might have been, and which to have lost 
is guilt and wretchedness. So that, should there ever 
be brought before a fallen moral nature, in outward 
form and reality, a Being the noble realisation of its 
own lost spiritual excellence — the full, perfect, beauti- 
ful reproduction in actual existence of that splendour 
of moral loveliness which once was its own — it is con- 
ceivable that the latent instincts of the soul would be 
roused to recognise and identify therein its lost original. 
Confront the fallen moral intelligence with its own 
perfect type, and in the instinctive shame and humili- 
ation that would arise within it, as at the spectacle of 
a glory it had lost, a native nobleness from which it 



SELF-EVIDENCING NATURE OF DIVINE TRUTH. IS 

had degenerated, there would be elicited an involuntary 
recognition of the truthfulness of the portraiture. 

Now, such is the response which the spirit of man, 
in the hour of contrition, renders to the perfect type 
of moral excellence which the Gospel brings before it. 
For it is to be considered that the sorrow and self- 
abasement which the " manifestation of the truth" 
calls forth in the awakened and penitent heart, derive 
their peculiar poignancy from the fact, that it is a sor- 
row not so much of discovery as of reminiscence. In 
the contemplation of God's holy law, and especially of 
that perfect reflection of it which is presented in the 
person and life of Jesus, the attitude of the penitent 
mind is that, not simply of observation, but of painful 
and humiliating recollection. The mental process that 
takes place may be described as analogous to one with 
which we are all familiar — that in which the mind goes 
in search of some word, or name, or thought, which we 
cannot at once recall, yet of which we have the cer- 
tainty that once we knew it ; \ so that, when at last, 
after laborious groping, it flashes on the memory, we 
recognise it not as a new word or thought, but as one 
the familiar form and aspect of which at once commend 
it to our consciousness. Or the recognition of the truth 
as it is in Jesus by the awakened soul, may be repre- 
sented as still more closely parallel to the feeling of 
one who revisits, in reverse of fortune, and after long 
years of absence, a spot with which, in other and 
happier days, he was familiar. It is conceivable that 
such an one might move for a while amidst old scenes 
and objects, unconscious of any past and personal con- 



14 



SERMON I. 



nection with theni ; until at last something occurs to 
touch the spring of association, when instantly, with a 
rush of recollection, old sights, impressions, incidents, 
come thick and crowding on the spirit, and the outward 
scene becomes clothed with a new vividness, and is 
perceived with a new sense of identity. The contem- 
plation is no longer sight but recognition; and as 
every object which the eye surveys recalls to the sad- 
dened spectator a bright and better past — brings up, in 
contrast with what he now is, the joyous, healthy 
happy being which once he was — it is a keener and 
deeper anguish far, a sorrow sharpened by the whet of 
reminiscence, which now pierces his soul. Now 7 , ana- 
logous to this is the process which is involved in the 
manifestation of the truth to the awakened mind. In 
the Scripture ideal of holiness, and in that sublime 
embodiment of it which is presented in the character 
and history of Jesus Christ, the soul when brought 
face to face with it recognises a something which comes 
home to its inner consciousness with all the painful 
reality of a lost and abandoned good. If the life of 
Christ were an ideal of excellence altogether foreign to 
us, the shame of the convicted conscience would lose 
half its bitterness. Did we perceive in it only a vague 
grandeur, which, out of the sphere of our consciousness, 
could be only half understood by it, we should feel no 
more shame in falling short of that ideal than the 
worm in that it cannot cope with the eagle's flight, or 
the stammering child in that he possesses not the wis- 
dom and eloquence of the sage. But the latent element 
that lends sharpness to the stings of self-accusation in 



SELF-EVIDENCING NATURE OF DIVINE TRUTH. 15 

the mind aroused by the manifestation of the truth, is 
the involuntary recognition in Christ of a dignity we 
have lost, an inheritance we have wasted, a perfection 
for which the spirit of man was formed, but which it 
has basely disowned. Eepentance is the recognition 
by the fallen self of its true self in Christ. As the 
touched and troubled heart listens to the story of that 
beauteous life ; as there rises before the spirit's quick- 
ened eye the vision of a Perfect Innocence in human 
form — of a sublime purity with which no alloy of 
sternness mingles, a mental and moral elevation in 
which no trace of self-consciousness can be detected, a 
piety rapt as an angel's combined with the unassuming 
simplicity of a child — as we ponder the narrative of a 
life of holiest fellowship with God, maintained amidst 
incessant toil and intercourse with men, a life of per- 
sistent self-sacrifice, undimmed by one thought of 
personal ease, or one act of selfish indulgence — a life in 
which love, tender as a mother's, grew more fervent 
amidst ingratitude, waxed stronger and deeper amidst 
insults and wrongs received at the very hands of its 
objects 5 — in one word, as inspiration summons up to 
the awakened mind, the spectacle of a perfectly holy 
human life, the deepest instincts of our nature are 
stirred to discern herein its own lost ideal — the type 
of excellence after which it may have vaguely groped, 
but which it never realised till now. " Here " — is the 
soul's involuntary conviction — " Here is that concep- 
tion which haunted me ever in my sinfulness, yet 
which I never fully discerned till now; here is that 
Light to which my darkened conscience was vainly 



16 



SERMON I. 



struggling, that standard to which my dim sense of a 
Eight I was abusing, a Purity I was sullying, a home 
of my spirit's peace and innocence I was forsaking, ever 
unconsciously pointed. And in this my vague and 
shadowy Ideal now become the Eeal, in this which 
gives to the fantasy of my weak and wavering imagina- 
tion correctness, condensation, reality — in this truth of 
life in Christ Jesus there is that which ' commends 
itself to my conscience in the sight of God/ " 

2. Again; the truth as it is in Jesus commends 
itself to our consciousness, not only in revealing to 
man the Lost Ideal of his nature, but also in discover- 
ing to Mm the mode of regaining it. The Scriptures 
appeal to man's nature for a verification of their account, 
not only of the ruin that affects it, but also of the 
mode of recovery ; they claim from the conscience not 
only a response to their description of the disease, but 
also a recognition of the suitability and sufficiency of 
the remedy they prescribe. The Gospel awakens in 
man's breast an echo to its teaching, first, in the mourn- 
ful acknowledgment, " this is the purity and peace I 
have lost," and then in the joyful recognition, "this, 
and none but this, is the mode of regaining it." 

Uo state of mind can be conceived more distressing 
than that of the man who, voluntarily or involuntarily, 
is falling below his own ideal. To have within me 
the conception of a high and noble standard with which 
my own performances are in miserable contrast, the 
vision of a beauty and excellence which I admire and 
honour, but which, in all that I am, and all that I do, 
I practically disown ; this is a condition the painful- 



SELF-EVIDENCING NATURE OF DIVINE TRUTH. 17 

ness of which, no mind can long endure. For a man's 
own comfort, he must either forget his ideal, or strive 
to realise it ; banish from his mind the thought of his 
lost purity and happiness, or set himself to regain it. 

It would be mistaken kindness to take a child, whose 
destined lot in life is a lowly and penurious one, and 
let him live in a home of wealth and refinement long 
enough to familiarise him with the tastes, habits, feel- 
ings of a high social sphere j for by so doing you would 
only awaken in his mind unsatisfied desires, and ren- 
der him wretched in his humble condition by the 
consciousness of a standard far above its resources. 
Or take the poor member of some rude and savage 
race, and permit him to reside in a civilised country 
till his mind has become in some measure receptive 
of the ideas, and accustomed to the amenities, of 
civilisation, and then send him back to his former 
haunts and companionships. Would not the result 
of such a discipline, in all probability, be that which 
has sometimes been witnessed in the contact of bar- 
barism with civilisation — profound melancholy in the 
remembrance of a lost social elevation, or recklessness 
in the attempt to forget it? But such illustrations 
fall far short of the misery of a mind on which has 
dawned the true conception of the nobleness of human 
life, the lofty ideal of moral greatness in Christ Jesus, 
whilst yet its own life is one of selfishness and sin. 
To such a mind there are but two ways in which it can 
attempt to regain its lost tranquillity — viz., either the 
miserable and ineffectual way of reckless self-forgetful- 
ness, or the true and Christian way of earnest aspira- 

B 



18 



SERMON 1. 



tion and endeavour to reach, its own ideal, and become 
that which, it admires. 

Now, the gospel not only brings before man the true 
representation of his lost perfection and glory in Christ 
Jesus, but it so meets and adapts itself to the soul 
which is in the attitude of aspiration after that perfec- 
tion, that the whole conscious nature recognises and 
responds to the provision that is made for its wants 
and exigencies. 

The great obstacles to the soul's recovery of its lost 
ideal are obviously these two — the sense of Guilt and 
the consciousness of Moral Weakness ; and the two 
great needs, therefore, of every awakened mind, are 
the need of Forgiveness, and the need of Moral 
Strength. And it is in meeting and supplying these 
wants that the truth as it is in Jesus commends itself 
most profoundly to the consciousness of man. 

(1.) The soul aspiring after holiness craves,— to take 
the former of these, — deliverance from Guilt ; and to 
that deep-felt want the gospel responds in the revela- 
tion of God in Christ Jesus. Consider how it is that 
the sense of guilt represses aspiration and energy in the 
awakened mind, and what, consequently, is the precise 
nature of that deliverance from guilt after which it 
longs. In some respects the analogous case of the 
debtor's embarrassments may help us to conceive of 
the needs of the guilty soul. "When a man becomes 
deeply and inextricably involved in debt, we know 
that his condition is often one of deplorable incapacity 
and weakness. Debt acts as a dead- weight on a man's 
energies. He who rises day by day to the conscious- 



SELF-EVIDENCING NATURE OF DIVINE TRUTH. 19 

ness of obligations which he cannot meet, who sees no 
possibility of extrication from pecuniary difficulties, 
not seldom loses all elasticity of mind — becomes spirit- 
less, languid, enervated. He has no heart to enter on 
any new work or enterprise so long as the past, with 
its hateful involvements, is ever confronting him. Do 
what he may, he feels that no effort of his can do more 
than clear off a mere fraction of the burden that oppres- 
ses him, and so the main stimulus to exertion is gone. 
Unable to retrieve the past, he perhaps resigns himself 
with a dull hopelessness and inactivity to his lot ; or, 
feeling that he cannot make matters better, becomes 
careless how he makes them worse. What this man 
wants in order to rouse him to effort, is to cut off his 
connection with the past, to sweep away its accumulated 
and insoluble obligations, and let him have a fair start 
in life again. Or, again, it may aid us in conceiving 
of the needs of a soul conscious of guilt, if we reflect 
on the depressing influence often produced by loss of 
character and reputation in the world. A man who 
has lost caste in society, has lost with it one of the 
most powerful incentives to effort. The atmosphere 
of mistrust and suspicion which past misdemeanours 
create around the erring, has a notorious tendency to 
crush hope and energy within him. The incitements 
of sympathy, honour, public opinion, no longer act 
upon him. The impossibility of regaining his lost 
place in the respect and estimation of society, quells 
hope and ambition in his breast ; and, aware how bad 
is the opinion which is entertained of him, he perhaps 
becomes careless how much he deserves it. If he 



20 



SERMON 1. 



could begin life anew — if the hateful Past, with its 
indelible memories, could be annihilated — it might be 
different with him ; but that dreadful Past haunts his 
thoughts, is reflected from the looks of his fellow-men, 
disturbs and oppresses him wherever he goes. Do 
what he may, men will not think well of him, and he 
perhaps abandons himself to the wretched contentment 
of despair. 

Now, such analogies as these may aid our conceptions 
of that obstacle which guilt presents to the soul that 
is longing to regain its lost moral glory. Like debt, 
conscious guilt hangs upon the awakened spirit, and 
clogs its energies. Of what avail any new effort to be 
good, so long as that record of neglected duties and 
responsibilities confronts it i The utmost exertion is 
insufficient even to meet the demands of daily duty, 
much less can it serve to wipe off the old score of 
guilt. Each day but adds to the undischarged and 
ever-growing debt ; and the burden on the conscience, 
do what the man will, becomes heavier and heavier. 
If he could but begin life anew — if the past could be 
lived over again — if the troubled soul could be made 
to feel as if the past had not been, and all its accumu- 
lated obligations were swept away — if the conscience 
were left free to enter, with all the elasticity of inno- 
cence, on a new life of duty — then there might be 
hope for the future. But no earthly power can effect 
such a discharge. Nothing can dissever the soul from 
its terrible responsibility for the debt of sin. So, again, 
like the ban of social condemnation, guilt, reflecting 
in the conscience the divine disapproval, incapacitates 



SELF-EVIDENCING NATURE OF DIVINE TRUTH. 21 

the soul for effort. But all such analogies are but 
partial and inadequate representations of the moral 
hindrance of guilt. For debt, however heavy, is not, 
in the nature of things, insoluble or untransferable; 
but guilt is. There is at least the possibility that the 
insolvent man may, by redoubled exertions, or by 
some unexpected access of fortune, or by the interven- 
tion of a friend, be freed from the depressing respon- 
sibility for the past. But in sin the aroused conscience 
feels that there is a certain strange indelibleness. Sin, 
once committed, cannot be unsinned. No conceivable 
earthly resources can ever pay off the debt which a 
guilty deed involves, and there is no possibility of 
transferring the obligation to another. The man, 
again, who has compromised himself with human 
society, may, by lapse of time or removal from the 
scene of his misdeeds, escape from the depressing 
influence of social suspicion and mistrust. But from 
the ban of Omniscience there is no such escape. In- 
finite Justice is independent of space and time. It 
knows no locality, no lapse of ages can wear out its 
hostility to a sin. Nay, even if it could be conceived 
capable of such leniency, it would be in vain. If God, 
by a simple act of oblivion, could pass over the 
awakened sinner's guilt, his own conscience would not 
suffer him to forget it. He would be " the wrath of 
God unto himself." The aroused conscience does not 
want a mere act of amnesty. It craves for the con- 
demnation of its sin, in the very agony of the desire to 
be freed from it. It sympathises with the law by 
which itself is condemned ; and no good-natured cle- 



22 



SERMON I. 



mency, no slight or easy pardon — nothing will satisfy 
it, unless the sin be branded with the mark of the 
law's offended majesty — be exposed to the righteous 
wrath of that awful and absolute Purity it has offended, 
— unless the culprit sin be, as it were, led out to exe- 
cution, and slain before it. 

Now, it is this deep necessity of the awakened spirit 
which, in the revelation of God in Christ, the gospel 
meets — ■& revelation in the person, life, and death of 
Jesus, which includes at once the most complete con- 
demnation of sin, and the most ample forgiveness of 
the sinner. For here, for one thing, we have set be- 
fore us, in the Person of Christ, Infinite Purity taking 
the very nature of the guilty into most intimate union 
with itself ; and surely this, to the troubled conscience, 
is no slight indication of divine forgiveness. It were 
no light thing for some poor outcast from society, if, 
while brooding over its misery and despair, some good 
and holy man should, setting all false dignity at de- 
fiance, come to the home of infamy, and offer to that 
poor child of sin and shame his love, his friendship, 
his affiance. Abandoned of society, lost to others' 
respect and to its own, yet yearning for one ray of 
hope or comfort, what cheering, what hopefulness, 
w T hat new life, would reanimate that saddened spirit 
when it discovered itself not so utterly lost as that a 
gentle, pure, and good man could not love and care for 
it ! But here, in this revelation of God in Christ, is 
the assurance that that Holy One, in whose presence 
angelic purity grows dim, stoops to take the very 
nature of the guilty, and blend it in mysterious affiance 



SELF-EVIDENCING NATURE OF DIVINE TRUTH. 23 

with His own. Surely the trembling heart may cease 
to despair of itself, or regard the past with hopeless 
despondency, when that very Being, in whom all law 
and right are centred, who is Himself essential Holi- 
ness, identified in His very being with absolute Good, 
condescends to wed the nature of man, guilty and fallen 
though he be, into closest affinity with Himself. But 
more than this : the gospel brings relief to the self- 
condemned spirit by exhibiting Infinite Purity, not 
only condescending to assume the nature of the guilty, 
but also in that nature passing through a history 
which brings it into ceaseless contact with sin in all its 
undisguised hatefulness and hostility to God. As if 
it were designed to prove to the most alarmed and 
desponding conscience that it is from no inadequate 
perception of man's guilt that mercy is extended to 
him, the Purity of heaven Incarnate exposes itself to a 
long continued contiguity with evil in its most hateful 
forms, permits itself to be pierced with all the anguish 
which sin's hostility could inflict upon it ; stands with 
the sensitive front of innocence the mark of all the 
poisoned arrows from sin's quiver; suffers earth and 
hell to brand upon that holiest, gentlest spirit, as if in 
letters of fire, sin's hatefulness ; and at last yields up 
itself as sin's victim into the hands of death. Yet, 
with all this, from first to last, infinitely loving right, 
unerringly cognisant of man's guilt, taking the full 
gauge of the abhorrent nature of that which he for- 
gave, Jesus is seen with mercy ever on His lip, for- 
giveness, compassion, love to sinners in His every look 
and act. And, finally, the gospel permits us to think 



24 



SERMON I. 



of Christ as one who, in conveying pardon to guilt, 
instead of relaxing the strictness, or bringing slight on 
the unbending rectitude of God's law, offers up the 
grandest possible tribute to its majesty and the most 
awful atonement for the sins that infringed it. Here, 
therefore, in this gospel of Christ is the most ample 
provision made for the guilty spirit's needs. Though 
my sin cannot be literally unsinned, though the past is 
irrevocable, though no moral act once done can ever 
be annulled, yet surely in this my trembling heart may 
find the rest for which it craves — the assurance that 
the past may be forgotten, and that sin is blotted out 
by an act in which its guilt is most fearfully con- 
demned and expiated — when I behold the very God 
who is Law, Eighteousness, Absolute Justice, in human 
form offering Himself up to the death to save me. 

(2.) The other great obstacle to the re-attainment of 
the lost perfection of our nature is, as I have said, 
Moral Weakness,— the conscious inertness and impo- 
tence of the soul in its endeavours after holiness ; and 
it is in providing for this need of man's spirit also that 
the gospel commends itself to the consciousness. 

It is in the attempt to reach its Lost Ideal that the 
soul becomes aware of its own moral weakness. It is 
not when the sick man lies prostrated by disease that 
he feels most his own feebleness, but when he begins 
to rally, and attempts to rise and walk, — it is then 
that, by the trembling step and tottering limb, he 
becomes aware how his strength has been wasted. 
When despotism has so quelled a nation's spirit that 
it cares not to put forth the feeblest resistance to its 



SELF-EVIDENCING NATURE OF DIVINE TRUTH. 25 

thraldom, it is not then that it is in a condition to 
discover the hopelessness of its "bondage ; but when, 
the spirit of insurrection roused, the attempt has been 
made to throw off the hateful yoke, and made in vain, 
— it is then that, in the strife and pain and mortifi- 
cation of discomfited rebellion, it learns by bitter ex- 
perience the terribleness of that power which keeps 
it down. So it is not when sin holds undisturbed 
dominion in the soul, but when the new ideal of holi- 
ness dawns upon its vision, when the first faint rally- 
ing efforts after God and duty begin to be made, — it is 
then that, in the feebleness of its resolutions, and the 
miserable ineffectiveness of its attempts to be good, 
there is forced upon it the painful conviction of its 
own moral weakness. And then, too, rises the intense 
longing for spiritual help. " Of what avail/' — is the 
unconscious utterance of its hopelessness and its aspira- 
tion — "Of what avail my knowledge of this glorious 
moral beauty in Christ ; of what use my perception 
of the noble thing humanity might become, when this 
only serves to mock my misery by the spectacle of 
unattainable good! Tell me not of the beauty of 
goodness, the hatefulness of sin, the blessedness of a 
holy life. I know it — I admit it ; but all this is but 
to talk of health's joyous activity to the paralytic, to 
point out to the poor slave the freedom for which he 
sighs in vain. Help me. Show me how to reach the 
ideal of good that is before me. Oh for some gift of 
power, some heaven-sent strength to nerve my en- 
feebled energies and arm resolution with ability to 
fulfil its aims ! " 



26 



SERMON I. 



Now, the gospel commends itself to the conscious- 
ness by responding to this deep want of the spirit 
also. For it reveals to the soul Christ as not only 
outwardly the Ideal, but inwardly the Hope and 
Strength of humanity. It would go no little way 
towards meeting the needs of a soul conscious of lofty 
desires and low attainments — of high aims and miser- 
able performances — if, in its loneliness and its weak- 
ness, there should be granted to it the perpetual pre- 
sence and guardianship of some lofty angelic nature. 
Imagine what it would be, if, amidst all your conscious 
moral weakness, some bright and loving spirit from the 
heavens should assume the task of watching over you. 
Think what aid it would afford you in your religious 
life — weak, wavering, perplexed as you often are — to 
have a guardian spirit, strong with heaven's strength, 
and pure with heaven's purity, ever near you. Think 
how all your better nature would be stimulated, your 
evil self repressed, the whole moral tone of life elevated 
and ennobled, if, wherever you went, the sweet, bright, 
hallowing sense of that loving spirit's presence hung 
around you like an atmosphere. Conceive of him 
accompanying you into all scenes of temptation, and 
whispering, in the moment of irresolution, the prompt- 
ing word of counsel, warning, or remonstrance ; in all 
perplexities imagine your spirit-friend ever at hand to 
solve your difficulties, and point out the path of duty : 
in the world a presence that gave dignity to life's 
humblest, coarsest cares ; and in your lonely or medi- 
tative hours still beside you, breathing the air of 
heaven into your solitude, and by his converse elevat- 



SELF-EVIDENCING NATURE OF DIVINE TRUTH. 27 

ing thought, enkindling devotion, and causing the 
whole soul to swell with high resolves and holy aspira- 
tions. What a boon were this to weak and wavering 
man ! How would each poor self-distrustful spirit leap 
forth to welcome such ennobling companionship ! Or 
would it not be still better — a blessing still more 
adequate to your needs — if not an angelic visitant, but 
Jesus Christ, your divine Lord Himself, should return 
in visible form, and in like manner as of old He 
frequented earthly homes, so come and abide in yours. 
Let any contrite soul, longing for the goodness it can- 
not reach, perturbed by the evil from which it cannot 
escape, think what it would be to have Jesus of Naza- 
reth dwelling for a single year with it as a familiar 
companion and friend. Imagine that, when in your 
conscious spiritual weakness your cry for help ascends 
to the throne, that glorious Saviour should hear, and 
in answer condescend Himself to leave yonder heavens, 
and for a while share your lot on earth, however lowly, 
and abide beneath your roof as your ever-present coun- 
sellor and guide. What a home would that be where 
such a presence rested ! What an atmosphere of 
heaven would pervade it ! What a resource would its 
happy inmates possess in all difficulties and perplexi- 
ties ! What holy ardour, what strength for duty would 
fill every heart ! If this blessed presence and guidance 
were offered to us, would not each self-distrustful soul 
hail it as a boon inestimable 1 Would not the response 
of the spirit be — " Come, 0 my Saviour, for sorely I 
need thy presence : my thoughts are confused, my 
affections languid, my purposes weak and wavering. 



28 



SERMON I. 



Come, 0 my Saviour, and with thee my whole being 
shall grow bright and strong ! " 

But if an outward presence or guardianship such as 
this would meet the soul's needs, how much more fully 
are they met in that which is the great crowning 
blessing of the gospel — the dispensation of the Spirit. 
For, if angelic guardianship would be a boon to any 
soul, if the attendance of a guardian spirit, counselling, 
prompting, strengthening, would help us in our spiri- 
tual life, here we have this, and more than this, actually 
bestowed upon us. A Spirit, would we but realise His 
presence, is ever with us to prompt each holy thought 
and nerve each pure resolve. If Christ, as an outward 
visitant, would be eagerly welcomed, if it would be a 
blessing to have Him dwelling for a season within our 
home, here, in the dispensation of His grace, we are 
told of a blessing greater still — of a presence of Jesus 
not within the house merely, but nearer and closer 
still — within the breast — within the heart. To every 
soul that will receive him, that very Jesus who de- 
parted as a visible presence from this earth, comes back 
as an inward and invisible Comforter. As really and 
more intimately than when men beheld His counte- 
nance, and listened to His words of love and power, 
Jesus is with us still. If it would strengthen you in 
your difficulties and struggles to know that He is near, 
to hear Him speak, to take hold of His strengthening 
hand, — know that He is nearer still than this. Every 
pure thought that rises in your breast is Christ's sug- 
gestion; every holy desire and resolution the proof 
that He is at hand ; every kindling of the spirit into 



SELF-EVIDENCING NATURE OF DIVINE TRUTH. 29 

devotion the unconscious recognition by the spirit of 
His heavenly presence near. Open the door of the 
heart to Him, and the very mind and soul of Jesus will 
pass into yours ; your spirit will be suffused with His ; 
the very heart of Jesus will be beating within your 
breast — Christ will be " in you the hope of glory." 0 
say, weak and wavering soul, is not this all thou needest 
in order to be holy, peaceful, strong ? As a reviving 
cordial to the fainting body, does not His divine grace 
commend itself to the inmost consciousness in the sight 
of God? 

The subject which we have now examined suggests 
to us, in conclusion, an obvious lesson as to the uni- 
versal responsibility of man for the belief of the truth. 
For the evidence on which divine truth bases its claim 
to our reception, is one cognisable and appreciable by 
all. It appeals not to man as an educated or intel- 
lectually accomplished being, but to man as man. It 
requires no intellectual effort for its recognition. It 
addresses itself not to any faculty in man which is 
developed only in the minds of the few, not to his 
logical or reasoning powers, but to that higher reason, 
that moral nature, which is common to all. Its appeal, 
in one word, is mainly, not to the head, but to the 
heart. No one who listens to the message of divine 
truth, can excuse his neglect or rejection of it by plead- 
ing intellectual incapacity — by saying that he is inca- 
pable of following out a process of historic proof, or of 
weighing elaborate arguments, and investigating subtle 
trains of reasoning. If the truth as it is in Jesus were 



30 



SER3ION I. 



a philosophy, such an excuse might be valid. If it 
pre-supposed, in order to the reception of it, the same 
powers which qualify, for instance, for the intellectual 
and critical study of the higher mathematics or meta- 
physics, then would its evidence be utterly beyond the 
range of the vast majority of men, and the humble and 
illiterate might justly be exonerated from all responsi- 
bility for their ignorance or unbelief. But the gospel 
is no philosophy. The truth of Christ is to be verified, 
not by the critical intellect, but by the common heart 
and consciousness of humanity. Wherever there is a 
heart that throbs with the common sensibilities of our 
nature — wherever there is a soul capable of love, and 
pity, and tenderness, and truth — there is fit audience 
and sufficient attestation for the gospel. The lisping 
babe, that stammers forth its first prayer of wondering 
awe and love to the great Father ; the poor day- 
labourer, whose intellect never ranges beyond the 
narrow round of his daily toils ; the weak worn sufferer, 
stretched on the bed of pain, incapable of the faintest 
approach to consecutive thought or reasoning, bereft of 
almost every other power but the power to love and 
pray, — these, as much, nay more, than the most erudite 
assemblies of high and philosophic minds, constitute 
the auditors to whom the gospel appeals for the veri- 
fication of its claims. 

It is true that the highest minds may fitly occupy 
their ratiocinative powers in the investigation of the 
evidence, and the systematic study and development of 
the truth. But let us never confound the gifts and 
acquirements necessary for the theologian with those 



SELF-EVIDENCING NATURE OF DIVINE TRUTH. 31 

of the believer. The powers sufficient to perceive and 
know and relish, are ever to be distinguished from the 
powers that are needed in order to theorise. It may 
imply much intellectual power to draw out and digest 
the theory and laws of music, but many who know 
nothing of the subject theoretically can sing and be 
delighted by song. And to make a man relish music, 
a good ear is better than all the analytic powers in the 
world. It may demand the most subtle intellect to 
discuss metaphysically the theory and laws of beauty, 
but no such powers are needed to gaze with delight on 
the glory of the grass and the splendour of the flower. 
In investigating the problem of the foundations of 
morals, metaphysical minds of the rarest order have 
been employed for ages ; but to honour an unselfish or 
noble act- — to perceive and hate baseness and selfish- 
ness — to appreciate what is pure and lovely and of 
good report — needs qualities which no metaphysic skill 
can confer, and yet which may be found in the garret 
or hovel where rude and unlettered poverty dwells. 
And so it is not the scholar's or the theologian's ac- 
quirements that best qualify for apprehending and 
appreciating the evidence of the truth as it is in Jesus. 
These may be indispensable for the theoretic analysis 
and development of the truth, but the consciousness 
of spiritual need — the yearning after pardon and re- 
conciliation with God — the orphan instincts of the 
spirit towards its lost Father — the contrition, the 
humility, the meek trust and self-devotion of an 
awakened and earnest soul, — these are the qualities 
which, apart from all theologic talents and attainments, 



32 



SERMON I. 



constitute the humblest, rudest mind that possesses 
them, a deeper critic of divine truth than the profound- 
est intellect or the rarest scholarship. The truth of 
the gospel, hid from the wise and prudent, may be 
revealed to babes. Ages of intellectual study will not 
serve to teach, that of the gospel's truth and power, 
which, may be learned by one upward glance of a tear- 
ful eye at the great Deliverer's feet. Honour to those 
who bring their genius and their intellectual lore to 
the service and illustration of the truth ! But be your 
gifts of reason what they may, to you, as capable of 
knowing it, as bound to receive it, the gospel appeals. 
Open your heart to it — yield up your spirit to its 
blessed teachings — pray for the grace and guidance of 
the Spirit of God, and the truth will constitute to you 
its own evidence. It will carry conviction to your 
heart of hearts. As you listen to it, the music of a 
heavenly voice will steal upon the inner ear ; a beauty 
that is not of this world — a beauty more glorious far 
than that which sits on mountain and stream and 
forest — will shine forth upon the inner eye of faith, in 
the discernment and recognition of which the Truth 
will " commend itself to your consciousness in the 
sight of God." 



SERMON II. 



SELF-IGNORANCE. 

*' Who can understand his errors ? Cleanse thou me from secret 
faults."— Psalm xix. 12. 

Of all kinds of ignorance, that which is the most 
strange, and, in so far as it is voluntary, the most 
culpable, is our ignorance of Self. For not only is the 
subject, in this case, that which might be expected to 
possess for us the greatest interest, but it is the one 
concerning which we have amplest facilities and oppor- 
tunities of information. Who of us would not think 
it a strange and unaccountable story, could it be told 
of any man now present, that for years he had harboured 
under his roof a guest whose face he had never seen — 
a constant inmate of his home, who was yet to him 
altogether unknown % It is no supposition, however, 
but an unquestionable fact, that to not a few of us, 

j from the first moment of existence, there has been 

i 

present, not beneath the roof, but within the breast, a 
mysterious resident, an inseparable companion, nearer 
to us than friend or brother, yet of whom, after all, 
c 



34 



SERMON II. 



we know little or nothing. What man of intelligence 
amongst us would not be ashamed to have had in his 
possession for years some rare or universally admired 
volume with its leaves uncut — or to be the proprietor 
of a repository, filled with the most exquisite produc- 
tions of genius, and the rarest specimens in science and 
art, which yet he himself never thought of entering 1 
Yet surely no book so worthy of perusal, no chamber 
containing objects of study so curious, so replete with 
interest for us, as that which seldom or never attracts 
our observation — the book, the chamber of our own 
hearts. We sometimes reproach with folly those 
persons who have travelled far, and seen much of 
distant countries, and yet have been content to remain 
comparatively unacquainted with their own. But how 
venial such folly compared with that of ranging over 
all other departments of knowledge, going abroad with 
perpetual inquisitiveness over earth and sea and sky, 
in search of information, whilst there is a little world 
within the breast which is still to us an unexplored 
region. Other scenes and objects we can study only at 
intervals ; they are not always accessible, or can be 
reached only by long and laborious journeys ; but the 
bridge of consciousness is soon crossed ; we have but 
to close the eye and withdraw the thoughts from the 
world without, in order at any moment to wander 
through the scenes and explore the phenomena of the 
still more wondrous world within. To examine other 
objects, delicate and elaborate instruments are often 
necessary; the researches of the astronomer, the 
botanist, the chemist, can be prosecuted only by means 



SELF-IGNORANCE. 



35 



of rare and costly apparatus : but the power of reflec- 
tion, that faculty more wondrous than any mechanism 
which art has ever fashioned, is an instrument possessed 
by all ; the poorest and most illiterate, alike with the 
most cultured and refined, have at their command an 
apparatus by which to sweep the inner firmament of 
the soul, and bring into view its manifold phenomena 
of thought and feeling and motive. And yet, with all 
the unequalled facilities for acquiring this sort of 
knowledge, can it be questioned that it is the one sort 
of knowledge that is most commonly neglected ; and 
that, even amongst those who would disdain the impu- 
tation of ignorance in history or science or literature, 
there are multitudes who have never acquired the 
merest rudiments of the knowledge of Self ] 

What has now been stated as to the too common 
neglect of self-knowledge in general, is emphatically 
true with respect to that branch of it to which the 
text relates. It is the moral part of our nature with 
reference to which defective knowledge is at once the 
most common and the most dangerous. As a matter 
of curiosity, an object of interesting study, every in- 
telligent man should know something of the structure, 
organisation, laws, and processes of his physical and 
of his intellectual nature; but as a matter, not of 
curious interest merely, but of the last and highest 
necessity, we ought to be acquainted with our moral 
nature — with the condition of our hearts in the sight 
of God, The care of our bodily health we may depute 
to another, and the skill of the physician may render 
our ignorance of physiology of little or no practical 



86 



SERMON II. 



moment j to be unacquainted even with our intellectual 
nature, inobservant of its operations and mistaken as 
to its character, may lead to no consequences more 
serious than vanity, self-conceit, an undue reliance on 
our own opinions; — but when our ignorance relates 
not to the body but to the soul, not to the head but to 
the heart, no language can exaggerate its danger. For 
the care of our spiritual health, the moral culture and 
discipline of the soul, we can never depute to another \ 
no friend on earth can be the soul's physician, or free 
us from the burden of our solitary responsibility with 
regard to it ; and unnoticed errors in the heart, 
unlike intellectual deficiencies, not merely affect our 
temporal condition or our social reputation, but may 
issue in our eternal ruin. 

Yet the text suggests, what all experience corrobo- 
rates, that it is a man's moral defects that are most 
likely to elude his own scrutiny. There is a peculiar 
secrecy, an inherent inscrutability, about our sins. 
Bodily disease or injury, in the great majority of cases, 
manifests its presence by pain — so obtrudes itself on 
our consciousness, that it is impossible for the sick 
man to be long unaware of his danger, or indifferent to 
its removal. But it is the peculiar characteristic of 
moral disease, that it does its deadly work in secret. 
Sin is a malady which affects the very organ by which 
itself can be detected ; it creates the darkness amid 
which it injures us, and blinds the eyes of its victim 
in the very act of destroying him. If there be any 
bodily disease to which it is analogous, it is to that 
fatal malady which often cheats the sick man into a 



SELF -IGNORANCE. 



37 



delusive tranquillity, the deeper and more deceitful in 
proportion to his danger. And if the unconscious 
cheerfulness of the dying be sometimes both strange 
and sad ; if it has ever happened to us, as we looked 
on the wan and wasted countenance on which con- 
sumption had set its ghastly seal, to listen with mingled 
wonder and pity to the words of unabated hopefulness 
from the sick man's hps, surely more deserving of our 
pity is he who, all unaware of his spiritual disease, is 
hastening on, in undisturbed tranquillity and self-satis- 
faction, to everlasting despair and death ! 

Now, it is this self- concealing tendency of sin, and 
the consequent difficulty of forming a right estimate of 
ourselves, to which the Psalmist refers in the prayer of 
the text — " Who can understand his errors ? — cleanse 
thou me from secret faults !" And what I now pur- 
pose, in following out the train of thought here 
suggested, is to point out to you a few of the causes or 
considerations which serve to explain the self-ignorance 
of the erring and sinful mind. 

I. One reason why the sinful man does not " under- 
stand his errors" is — That sin can be truly measured 
only when it is resisted. It is impossible to estimate 
the strength of the principle of evil in the soul till we 
begin to struggle with it ; and the careless or sinful 
man — the man who, by supposition, is not striving 
with, but succumbing to sin, cannot know its force. 
So long as evil reigns unopposed within the soul, it 
will reign, in a great degree, unobserved. So long as a 
man passively and thoughtlessly yields up his will to 



83 



SERMON II. 



the sway of worldly principles or unholy desires and 
habits, he is in no condition to measure their intensity 
— scarcely to discover their existence. For in this, as 
in many other cases, resistance is the best measure 
of force. The most powerful agents in nature, when 
unopposed, do their work silently and without attract- 
ing observation ; it is only when some counteracting 
power arises to dispute their sway that attention is 
drawn to their presence and their potency. The rapid 
stream flows smooth and silent when there are no 
obstacles to stay its progress ; but hurl a rock into its 
bed, and the roar and surge of the arrested current will 
instantly reveal its force. You cannot estimate the 
wind's strength when it rushes over the open plain ; 
but when it reaches and wrestles with the trees of the 
forest, or lashes the sea into fury, then, resisted, you 
perceive its power. Or if, amidst the ice-bound regions 
of the North, an altogether unbroken, continuous 
winter prevailed, comparatively unnoticed would be its 
stern dominion ; but it is the coming round of a more 
genial season, when the counteracting agency of the 
sun begins to prevail, that reveals, by the rending of 
the solid masses of ice, and by the universal stir and 
crash, and commotion over the face of nature, the 
intensity of the bygone winter's cold. 

Now, so too is it in the spiritual world. Sin's 
power is revealed only in the act of resistance. No 
agent more potent, and none, if undisputed, more im- j 
perceptible in its operation. In many a worldly and 
godless heart it reigns viewless as the wind— silent as 
the smooth and rapid stream. Eule in whatever form 



SELF-IGNORANCE. 



39 



it may — in selfishness, or worldliness, or pride, or 
ambition, or covetousness, or sensuality — sin often 
"breathes over that inner world an influence, not only 
as stern and withering, but also as still and unobtrusive 
as an unbroken winter's cold. On the other hand, 
resistance discloses it. When the aspiration after a 
purer, nobler life, begins to rise within the breast, and 
the long passive spirit rouses its energies to check the 
pride of evil, to force back and stay the current of 
unholy desire and passion ; when the softening prin- 
ciple of divine love and grace begins to thaw the icy 
coldness of a godless heart, then it is that the soul 
becomes aware of the deadly strength of sin. Often 
the sense of guilt breaks upon the awakened spirit with 
all the strangeness of a discovery. With the rise of its 
new and higher consciousness there comes upon the 
soul the feeling of a hitherto unrealised burden — a 
heavy and intolerable weight of evil, restraining and 
crushing back its new-born energies. Hitherto at ease 
in the embrace of sin, when the vision of God dawns 
upon the spirit, there is a yearning to get near Him, 
and an impatience and galling sense of bondage in that 
which keeps it away from Him ; as when a child, con- 
tentedly reposing in a stranger's arms, no sooner 
catches a glimpse of the parent than it struggles and 
stretches out towards the loved form, ill at ease in that 
embrace in which it had till now unconsciously rested. 
Nor is it only in the first struggles of penitence that 
sin is revealed in its true character to the soul. With 
every increase of spirituality, whatever of evil remains 
in it becomes more repulsive to its keener sensibilities, 



40 



SERMON II. 



more irksome to its aspiring energies. Faults and 
errors, unapparent or venial to its former consciousness, 
become in the higher stages of the spiritual life more 
and more odious ; and in the purest and best actions 
more of evil is now discerned than formerly in the 
basest and worst. The quickened conscience feels the 
drag of sin at each successive step the more heavy ; 
and as the believing spirit yearns with an intenser 
longing for the life of God, with a more indignant 
impatience does the cry break from the lip — "Who 
shall deliver me from the body of this death ]" 

II. Another reason for the self-ignorance of the 
sinner is — That sin often makes a man afraid to know 
himself The suspected existence of something wrong 
in the soul makes us shrink from self- inspection. 
Strange though it may seem, the state of mind is by 
no means an uncommon one in which a man has a 
latent misgiving that all is not right with his soul; 
yet, from a disinclination to know the whole truth and 
to act up to it, refrains from all further examination. 
There are few men who do not know a little of them- 
selves j multitudes whom that little so disturbs that 
they refuse to know any more. Ever and anon, even 
in the most careless life, the veil of custom drops, and 
the soul catches a glimpse of its own deep inward 
wretchedness ; but the glimpse so terrifies that few 
will look again. The heart of a sinful man, laid bare 
in all its nakedness to its own inspection, is a sight 
on which it would be terrible to look long; and 
most men prefer the delusive tranquillity of ignorance 



SELF-IGNORANCE. 



41 



to the wholesome pain of a thorough self- revela- 
tion. 

And yet this voluntary ignorance, where interests so 
momentous are at stake, strange in itself, becomes the 
more strange when contrasted with our conduct in 
other cases. In the affairs of this world men will, 
indeed, often shun the sight of inevitable evils, and 
refuse to disturb themselves by the contemplation of 
calamities which it is beyond their power to avert. But 
where the suspected evil is not beyond the reach of 
remedy, in most minds there is a disposition of quite 
an opposite character — a disposition that seeks, on the 
least appearance of any alarming symptom, to know 
the worst at once. Does the prudent man of business, 
for instance, light on something strange in his confi- 
dential servant's accounts, or are his suspicions awak- 
ened as to the state of some debtor's affairs with whom 
he is deeply involved — what, in the great majority of 
cases, will be his immediate mode of action ? To shut 
his eyes to the disagreeable information, and, by refrain- 
ing from all further investigation, purchase present ease 
at the risk of future ruin ? Not so ; but rather instantly 
to set about a rigid scrutiny, and not to rest till he has 
sifted the matter to the bottom, though the unpleasant 
discovery should be that his servant has embezzled his 
property, or that his debtor is on the brink of bank- 
ruptcy. Or does the anxious and affectionate relative 
note with alarm the symptoms of dangerous disease in 
the person of one he loves — does he see, or persuade 
himself he sees, the hectic flush beginning to gather 
on the cheek — does he hear, or think he hears, the 



42 



SERMON II. 



short sharp cough, that rouses all his fears for the 
future — and need I ask what, in general, will be the 
effect of such misgivings? What parent, husband, 
friend, at such a time, could consult his own selfish 
tranquillity by ignoring the danger, taking no means 
to discover its extent, and, if possible, to check its 
progress ? 

But, however rare in the sphere of our worldly in- 
terests, this voluntary blindness, this reckless evasion 
of disagreeable intelligence, is in spiritual things, even 
among prudent, wise, sagacious men, not the exception 
but the rule. Inquisitive, restless, easily alarmed in 
other cases, most men become strangely incurious here. 
Our fears and suspicions diminish instead of increasing, 
in proportion to the magnitude of the interests involved ; 
and when it is not our health, or wealth, or worldly 
fortunes, but the character and happiness of the soul 
for time and eternity that are implicated, the almost 
universal endeavour is, not to provide against threatened 
danger, but to evade or forget the signs of it. Few 
men, indeed, however thoughtless and indifferent to 
religion, can pass through life without occasional mis- 
givings as to their spiritual state. There are times 
when conscience speaks out even to the most careless 
ear, and passing visitations of anxiety as to the soul 
and its destiny trouble the most callous heart. Amidst 
the superficial cares and pleasures of a worldly exist- 
ence a man's deeper nature may slumber ; the surface- 
ripple of the stream of common life may fill the sense 
and lull the soul to sleep, but to almost every one there 
come occasions when the smooth current of the life of 



SELF-IGNORANCE. 



48 



sense is interrupted, and his true self is roused to a 
temporary wakefulness. In the stillness of the lonely 
sickbed, amidst worldly reverses, in declining health, 
or under bitter bereavement, when we stand by the 
bier, or bend over the closing grave of old friends and 
coevals — in such passages of man's history, the soul, 
eternity, God, become for the moment real things, and 
the most thoughtless and worldly-minded is forced to 
pause and think. Or, again, when the sinful man 
listens to some very earnest exhibition of divine truth, 
or is brought into contact with one who is living a 
very holy, pure, unselfish life, a painful impression of 
his own deficiencies— a transient glimpse of a nobler, 
purer ideal of life, to which his own presents a miser- 
able contrast — may visit his mind. But such thoughts 
are too distressing to be long dwelt upon. Very rarely 
have men the resolution voluntarily to arrest and 
detain them before the mind's eye. We do not like to 
have the easy tranquillity of our life disturbed by 
spiritual anxieties. We do not care to have our self- 
complacency hurt by the repulsive spectacle of our 
proper selves : and, as the fair face on which disease 
has left its ugly seams, turns with pain from the first 
sight of the reality which the mirror reveals, so the 
mind hastens to avert its view from the too faithful 
reflection of self which an awakened conscience pre- 
sents. Instead of seeking true comfort by the steady, 
however painful, contemplation, and then, through 
God's grace, by the deliberate, persevering correction 
of its evil self, the mind too often seeks a speedier, but 
most unreal, satisfaction, by forgetting its convictions, 



44 



SERMON II. 



and seeing itself only in the false glass of the world's 
opinions. Thus, with many, life is but a continuous 
endeavour to forget and keep out of sight of their true 
selves — a vain eluding and outstripping of a reality 
which is still ever with them, and to the consciousness 
of which they must one day awake. Often, however, 
it is an endeavour attended only with partial success. 
Deep down, in the most worldly and careless mind, 
there is often a hidden restlessness, an uneasy disquiet- 
ing consciousness, as of an evil half realised, and which 
it would fain, but cannot, forget. Inadequate to pro- 
duce any serious reformation, the convictions of con- 
science yet remain as a latent foreboding — a vague 
sense as of a debt undischarged, and still hanging over 
us — a disease uncured and secretly working within us. 
Eefusing to know himself, the man is often far from 
happy in his forgetfulness. His brightest hours are 
overshadowed as by the vague sense of a coming 
danger. There is a feverishness and unreality in all 
his joys ; and the nearest approach to happiness he 
attains is but, after all, as the wretched enjoyment of 
the poor spendthrift, who revels on for a little hour in 
unreal splendour, rather than be at the pains to examine 
into his embarrassed affairs ; or of the hapless wretch 
in the sinking ship, who drives away by intoxication 
the sense, but only thereby unfits himself the more to 
encounter the reality, of danger. 

III. Again, the self-ignorance of the sinful may be ac- 
counted for, by the sloio and gradual way in ivhich, in 
most cases, sinful habits and dispositions are acquired. 



SELF-IGNORANCE. 



45 



Apart from any other consideration, there is some- 
thing in the mere fact of the gradual and insidious 
way in which changes of character generally take place, 
that tends to blind men to their own defects. For 
every one knows how unconscious we often are of 
changes that occur by minute and slow degrees. If, 
for instance, the transitions from one season of the 
year to another were more sudden and rapid, our 
attention would be much more forcibly arrested by 
their occurrence than it now is. But because we are 
not plunged from midsummer into winter, — because, 
in the declining year, one day is so like the day that 
preceded it, the daylight hours contract so insensibly, 
the chilly feeling infuses itself by such slight increases 
into the air, the yellow tint creeps so gradually over 
the foliage, — because autumn thus frequently softens 
and shades away into winter, by gradations so gentle, 
we scarcely perceive while it is going on the change 
which has passed over the face of nature. So, again, 
how imperceptibly do life's advancing stages steal upon 
us % If we leapt at once from boyhood into manhood, 
or if we lay down at night with the consciousness of 
manhood's bloom and vigour, and waked in the morn- 
ing to find ourselves grey-haired, worn and withered 
old men, we could not choose but be arrested by tran- 
sitions so marked. But now, because to-day you are 
very much the same man as yesterday — because, with 
the silent growth of the stature, the graver cares, and 
interests, and responsibilities of life gather so gradually 
around you ; and then, when you reach the turning- 
point and begin to descend, because this year the blood 



46 



SERMON IT. 



circulates but a very little less freely, and but a few 
more and deeper lines are gathering on the face, than 
in the last ; because old associations are not suddenly 
broken up, but only unwound thread by thread, and 
old forms and faces are not swept away all at once by 
some sudden catastrophe, but only drop out of sight 
one by one, — you are not struck, you are not forced to 
think of life's decline, and almost unawares you may 
not be far off from its close. 

Now, if we know that changes such as these in the 
natural world and in our own persons take place im- 
perceptibly, may not this prepare us to admit, that 
analogous changes, equally unnoted, because equally 
slow and gradual, may be occurring in our moral char- 
acter, in the state of our souls before God 1 And with 
many I maintain that it is actually so. There is a 
winter of the soul, a spiritual decrepitude and death, 
to which many are advancing, at which many have 
already arrived, yet all unconsciously, because by 
minute and inappreciable gradations. For character is 
a thing of slow formation. Seldom or never does the 
soul reach its mature and consolidated state by broadly- 
marked and rapid transitions. The incidents of each 
passing day help by minute touches to mould it. The 
successive changes of our outward life leave each their 
little deposit behind, though it may be long before the 
formation becomes of noticeable dimensions. Every 
passing breath of moral influence shakes and sways 
the stem of our being, but it may be many a day ere, 
by the bent acquired in one particular direction, we 
can mark the prevailing wind. Differing as we all do 



SELF-IGNORANCE. 



47 



from each, other, perhaps as much in our individual 
characters as in the form and expression of our outward 
features, we did not issue, each with his own separate 
stamp of character full formed, from Nature's mintage ; 
and in the case of the irreligious and sinful, it has been 
by the slow and plastic hand of time that the natural 
evil of man's being has been moulded into the manifold 
forms and aspects which their characters now exhibit. 
A character of confirmed selfishness, or covetousness, 
or sensuality, or harshness and irascibility, or hardened 
worldliness and unspirituality, — whatever may be the 
special type of character in any one here, it never was 
formed in a day, or by a few strokes upon the raw mate- 
rial of mind. On the contrary, it has been by many 
a small sin, by innumerable minute tamperings with 
conscience, by a thousand insignificant sacrifices of 
principle to passion, of duty to inclination — by multi- 
plicity of little fits of anger and unnoted acts of sensual 
indulgence — it has been by a long series and succession 
of such experiences as these, that many a man's moral 
being has been fashioned into the shape it wears. 
The change for the worse, though on the whole, and to 
other observers, very marked, has been from day to day 
slight and inappreciable ; so that not only the worldly, 
the careless, the unspiritual, but even the openly wicked 
and abandoned, have often a comparatively slight and 
imperfect sense of that evil in them which has grown, 
and deepened, and darkened, shade by shade. The 
most hardened and shameless profligate, had he reached 
his present maturity in sin by a single stride, would 
probably be as much horrified at the change, as if the 



48 



SERMON II. 



merry innocent face and clear bright eye of his child- 
hood had been transformed, in a single day, into the 
bloated aspect and suspicions scowl of guilt. But just 
as men note not the lines of deformity settling day by 
day over the countenance, so neither do they discern 
the lineaments of moral repulsiveness daily deepening 
into the soul. 

IV. It tends greatly to increase this insensibility to 
the progress of sin in the soul, that, as character gra- 
dually deteriorates, there is a parallel deterioration of 
the standard by which we judge of it As sin grows, 
conscience declines in vigour. The power that per- 
ceives sin partakes of the general injury which sin in- 
flicts on the soul. It does not remain stationary while 
the other elements of our being — the desires, affections, 
moral energies — are in downward motion. It does not 
resemble a spectator standing on the shore, who can 
discern the slightest motion of the vessel in the stream, 
but rather to the other powers conscience stands in the 
relation of a fellow-voyager, who cannot perceive in his 
companions the motion of which himself partakes. Or, 
as in fever and other diseases that affect the brain, the 
disease soon unhinges the power by which the patient 
is made conscious of its ravages ; so sin is a malady 
which cannot proceed far without injuring the moral 
consciousness by which its presence can be known. 
Even to the natural conscience, weak and unenlight- 
ened though it be, sin, in many of its forms, has an 
ugly look at first, but its repulsiveness rapidly wears 
off by familiarity. To the call of duty, the voice of re- 



SELF-1 GNORA NCE. 



49 



ligion, the first announcement of the solemn truths of 
death and judgment and retribution, the mind, even in 
its natural and unrenewed state, can never be alto- 
gether insensible; but, if unregarded, the impression 
soon fades, and the solemn sounds grow fainter and 
fainter to the ear. By every act of disobedience to its 
dictates we sin away something of the sensitiveness of 
conscience ; and it is quite possible for the process of 
disobedience to go on until even from the grossest sins 
all the first recoil of dislike is gone, and to the voice 
of warning and instruction there rises not the faintest 
echo of compunction in the soul. Just as in winter 
the cold may become so intense as to freeze the ther- 
mometer, and thereby to leave you without the means 
of marking the subsequent increases of cold, so there 
is a point in the lowered temperature of the inward 
consciousness where the growing coldness, hardness, 
selfishness of a man's nature can no longer be noted — 
the mechanism by which moral variations are indicated 
becoming itself insensible and motionless. And then 
—then in an awful sense — does his sin become a hid- 
den thing to the sinner; then is attained a dread- 
ful freedom, an ominous emancipation from] all re- 
straint. The soul has reached that condition in which 
it can sin on unchecked, contracting a daily accumu- 
lating debt of guilt, yet all unconsciously, — inflicting 
deeper and more incurable wounds upon itself, yet 
without pain, — heaping up, without remonstrance, 
wrath against the day of wrath. No matter how rapid 
its fatal descent, no warning voice can retard it now ; 
no matter how terrible the ruin before it, no prognostic 

D 



50 



SERMON II. 



of danger can startle it now. " The light that was in 
it" has become " darkness ; and how great is that dark- 
ness ! " 

Such, then, are some of the ways in which sin 
effects its own concealment. And surely, if it is pos- 
sible that any one who now hears me is in the condi- 
tion I have attempted to describe, it will need few 
words to set before him its guilt and danger ; its guilt, 
— for let no man flatter himself that unconsciousness 
of sin divests any act of its culpability, or even of 
necessity extenuates the fault of the transgressor. 
Voluntary ignorance, so far from being a palliation, is 
only an aggravation of the offence. He who willingly 
extinguishes the light escapes not the consequences of 
the errors to which darkness leads. The drunkard, 
who prepares for crime by first heating his brain to 
madness, is not therefore treated as if he were naturally 
irresponsible. And to have evaded the light of consci- 
ence, or persisted in sin till the light of conscience dies 
out, instead of palliating ulterior acts of guilt, is itself 
one of the greatest which can be committed. No ! he 
who never knew, and could not know, God's will, may 
honestly offer the plea of ignorance; but the wil- 
ful ignorance of hardened insensibility is at once a 
grievous aggravation of the offence and its most awful 
punishment. 

And the danger of self-ignorance is not less than its 
guilt. For of all evils a secret evil is most to be 
deprecated, — of all enemies a concealed enemy is the 
worst. Better the precipice than the pitfall; better 



SELF-IGNORANCE. 



51 



the tortures of curable disease than the painlessness of 
mortification ; and so, whatever your soul's guilt and 
danger, better to be aware of it. However alarming, 
however distressing, self-knowledge may be, better that 
than the tremendous evils of self-ignorance. 

If indeed there were any possibility of your state 
being beyond hope or help, if your sin were irreme- 
diable, and your doom inevitable, then might you be 
excused for refraining from all inquiry, — then might 
further remonstrance be cruelty, not kindness. The 
dying man need not be tormented with useless reme- 
dies. The doomed felon may be let alone, to pass 
quietly the interval till his execution. But it is not 
so with you. No man here need, by himself or others, 
be given up for lost. No living soul is beyond the 
reach of remedy. You need not shrink from laying 
bare the sore, however hideous — from probing the 
wound of the soul to the quick, however painful the 
process, as if it were all in vain. Far less need you 
"heal your hurt slightly/ ' or seek from false remedies 
a superficial peace, when, for each and all, the sovereign 
specific, the divine Healer, is at hand. "There is 
balm in Gilead ; there is a Physician there." No case 
beyond His intervention ; no soul so far gone in sin as 
to bafne His skill. Open your whole heart to Jesus. 
Tell Him all your case. Confess at His feet every 
hidden grief, every secret sorrow, every untold guilty 
fear. He is ready to hear and help ; He is infinitely 
able to save unto the uttermost all that come unto Him. 
At the last extremity, spiritual life and death trembling 
in the balance, call Him in ; lay open your soul to His 



52 



SERMON II. 



inspection ; cast yourself in confiding love on His all- 
sufficient aid, and your recovery is sure. 

But, on the other hand, if indolence or indifference 
prevail, and you refuse to know your danger, and to 
seek the Saviour's proffered aid, reflect, I beseech you, 
that a time is approaching when self-knowledge shall 
be no longer a matter of choice. It is possible now to 
exclude the light ; but a light is soon to dawn that, 
whether we will or no, shall pierce to the hidden 
depths of every heart, and lay bare the soul at once to 
the eye of Omniscience, and to its own. It is possible 
now to seek the peace of self-forgetfulness, — to refuse 
to be disturbed, — to sink for a little longer into our 
dream of self-satisfaction ; but it is a peace as transient 
as it is unreal. Soon, at the latest, and all the more 
terrible for the delay, the awakening must come. 
There are sometimes sad awakenings from sleep in this 
world. It is very sad to dream by night of vanished 
joys, — to revisit old scenes, and dwell once more 
among the unforgotten forms of our loved and lost, — 
to see in the dream-land the old familiar look, and hear 
the well-remembered tones of a voice long hushed and 
still, and then to wake, with the morning light, to the 
aching sense of our loneliness again. It were very sad 
for the poor criminal to wake from sweet dreams of 
other and happier days — days of innocence, and hope, 
and peace, when kind friends, and a happy home, and 
an honoured or unstained name were his, — to wake in 
his cell, on the morning of his execution, to the horrible 
recollection that all this is gone for ever, and that to-day 
he must die a felon's death. But inconceivably more 



SELF-IGNORANCE. 



53 



awful than any awakening which earthly daybreak 
has ever brought shall be the awakening of the self- 
deluded soul when it is roused in horror and surprise 
from the dream of life — to meet Almighty God in 
judgment I 



SERMON III. 



SPIRITUAL I NFL UENCE. 

" Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind 
bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst 
not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth : so is every one that 
is born of the Spirit."— John, iii. 7, 8. 

The change of which our Lord here speaks is not, as 
His incredulous auditor at first supposed, a physical one ; 
yet is it one which, in some respects, implies a revolu- 
tion in man's being as great as if the strange fancy of 
Mcodemus had been literally true. Marvellous though 
it would be for the old man to become a little child again 
— for one surrounded with the cares and responsibilities 
of manhood, or sinking into the feebleness of age, to 
feel the shadow on the sundial of life going back, and 
the light of life's morning once more shining around 
him ; yet might such a return from the maturity or 
decline to the infancy of man's outward life involve 
nothing so wonderful as the entering upon a new spiri- 
tual history — the second birth of the soul. Could we 
for a moment entertain the supposition that some one 
here who is now far advanced in life, had this day 



SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 



55 



become conscious, as if by some mysterious spell passing 
over him, that a new freshness was beginning to be 
infused into the springs of his physical life, that the 
form and features on which Time's impress had unmis- 
takably been set, were being moulded anew into the 
roundness and softness of childhood, and the worn and 
withered man was, by some strange influence, trans- 
formed again into the bright and buoyant creature of 
days long bygone ? — yet even then, I repeat, extrava- 
gant and incredible as such a conception seems, we 
should have before us a transformation not at all so 
wonderful, so momentous, as that of which the text 
affirms the possibility. Tor it speaks, not of the re- 
construction of the outward form, but of the re-creating 
of the inward life ; not of a mere external metamor- 
phosis, but of an inner and vital change. And it 
cannot be doubted that mental and moral changes are 
far more momentous than physical ; that a transforma- 
tion of soul would revolutionise a man's being far 
more completely than a mere modification of bodily 
form and feature. The soul is the true essence of 
man's nature. The character, spirit, moral temper of 
the inner being constitutes the man, and everything 
else is outward and incidental. The physical form and 
life, amidst a thousand changes, may leave the real 
man unaltered, or as little changed as the inhabitant 
by the re-construction of the house, or the person by 
the new making of the vesture that clothes it. Too 
early experience of life may force the mind into a pre- 
mature exhaustion, so that beneath a youthful form 
there may be the old man's spirit ; and, on the other 



56 



SERMON III. 



hand, there are instances in which, by the tempered 
use of strong vital energies, an old man has preserved 
to the last a youthful elastic spirit in the worn form of 
age. But in all cases, what the spirit is, that the man 
may truly be said to be. To regain, therefore, the 
child's form, would be but a slight transmutation com- 
pared with regaining the child-heart ; and though the 
form and aspect of maturity or age remain without the 
slightest modification, yet if there be the birth of a 
new spirit-life, the revival of a childlike heart and soul 
in the hidden depths of man's being, then is the change 
more marvellous, more momentous, than if the old man 
could in very deed go back and enter life anew. 

Now, it is this inward change, this recommencement 
of the inner histor}^ which every soul experiences that 
passes under the plastic touch of the Spirit of God. It 
is no fanciful notion which the Scripture teaches when 
it declares of believers that, " laying aside all malice, 
guile, hypocrisies, envies"- — all the unhallowed and 
sophisticated tastes and habits of their false manhood 
— " they, as new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of 
the word, that they may grow thereby ; " or, in other 
words, that the simple desires and tastes of a little 
child, in a sense, rise again within their hearts. For 
in the soul that begins in real earnest to be devoted to 
God, there will be felt by degrees the awakening of a 
new and diviner life. A joy more sparkling than the 
joy of infancy, yet deeper, more enduring far, will steal 
upon it. There will be a new meaning in life to the 
quickened vision of the new-born soul. A new and 
more glorious aspect will gradually dawn upon the 



SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 



57 



world, and outward objects and events will be invested 
with a novelty and vividness of interest akin to that of 
the happy time when, to the wondering gaze of child- 
hood, all things were yet fresh and new. Within the 
heart, too, of the believer, there will rise, by degrees, 
a calm, unanxious trustfulness, a certain self-forgetful- 
ness and freedom from worldly care, analogous to the 
unconscious and unquestioning reliance of a little child 
on the father's ability to provide for its needs. In one 
word, let the soul be visited by the renewing influence 
of the Spirit of God, and sooner or later there will be 
manifest in it the signs of a new and more glorious 
infancy — -a reproduction of all the more attractive 
qualities of childhood, yet purer, nobler far than they, 
as the life of spirit is more glorious than the life of 
sense. 

Such, then, is the transformation of man's being, 
the necessity of which our Lord announced to the 
wondering Mcodemus in the words, " Ye must be born 
again." And if the idea of a second birth seemed so 
strange and wonderful to the man who understood 
literally our Saviour's language, not less marvellous 
would it appear to the mind that could attach to the 
words their true and spiritual import. But you per- 
ceive that, in order to obviate the difficulties to which 
the announcement of this mysterious doctrine had 
given rise in the mind of his auditor, our Lord pro- 
ceeds, in the text, to suggest to him what may be 
called a simple argument from analogy. With infinite 
condescension, the divine Teacher endeavours t© remove 
the incredulity of the inquirer, by directing his mir» rl 



58 



SERMON III. 



to certain phenomena in the natural world, equally 
real, yet equally mysterious and inexplicable, with the 
spiritual change of which He had spoken. He bids 
the startled listener look around hirn, and see, in the 
simplest and most familiar facts and occurrences in 
nature, the evidence of powers and processes as inscru- 
table as are involved in the doctrine of the soul's 
second birth. " Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye 
must be born again," — every passing breeze contains 
the intimation of a mystery as great as this,— "The 
wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the 
sound thereof, yet canst not tell whence it cometh and 
whither it goeth : so is every one that is born of the 
Spirit." 

The argument of the text, then, is derived from the 
existence of parallel difficulties in Nature and Keve- 
lation. Let us endeavour to follow out this argument 
a little further, with the view of obviating certain 
objections to the doctrine of Eegeneration. The diffi- 
culties connected with the regenerating operation of 
the Spirit of God, to which the illustration of the text 
may be regarded as pointing, are these three — its Su- 
pernaturalness, its Sovereignty or apparent Arbitrari- 
ness, and its Secrecy. It is perhaps to the last of 
these points that the argument, in strict accuracy, 
should be confined, but the analogy holds not less 
obviously in respect to the other two. 

I. In not a few minds there is a certain shrinking 
from the supernatural, which renders such doctrines as 
that of the text peculiarly distasteful and difficult of 



SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 



59 



reception. If, for trie ignorant and superstitions, the 
invisible world possess a strange attraction, disposing 
the niind often to ascribe natural events to superna- 
tural agencies, and to call in, on the most common 
occasions, the interposition of unseen and mysterious 
powers, there is an opposite class of minds in which 
the tendency is equally strong to explain everything 
by natural causes, and to exclude as much as possible 
the thought of any other than known and familiar 
agents. Ignorance may indeed be the mother of a 
spurious devotion, but there is a practical scepticism 
more to be deprecated, of which self-sufficient know- 
ledge is often the parent. It may be the tendency of 
the religion of an unenlightened age to translate every 
unexplained fact or phenomenon into the immediate 
interposition of the Deity. The poor savage hears a 
wrathful voice in every storm, and trembles as at the 
presence of a retributive Power, when the portentous 
shadow crosses the sun's disc, or the white lightning 
quivers athwart the heavens. The ignorant mind 
creates out of its own terrors, in dreams, and impres- 
sions, and fluctuating moods, direct intimations of the 
divine presence and will. But as society advances in 
knowledge, and as many of those events, formerly at- 
tributed to supernatural agency, are discovered to be the 
result of natural causes, it too often happens that, with 
the superstitious recognition, all practical acknowledg- 
ment of the divine presence and agency is lost. Ac- 
customed to the observation of natural causes at work 
around them, men cease to think of any other. The 
tendency becomes habitual to refer everything to laws 



60 



SERMON III. 



of nature, and to imagine that, when we have specified 
the outward and physical causes of any phenomenon, 
we have completely accounted for it. The voice of 
God is no longer heard in the thunder when the laws 
of electricity begin to be known. In the darkened 
luminary there is no shadow of the Almighty's wing 
to the observer who can calmly sit down and calculate 
the period and duration of the solar eclipse. The re- 
gion of marvels is thus driven further and further back, 
but the territory lost to Superstition is seldom won for 
Eeligion. The old gods of heathenism have long van- 
ished from the woods and meadows and fountains ; but 
it is not that the one living and true God, but only 
gravitation, light, heat, magnetism, may be recognised 
as reigning in their forsaken haunts. And we carry 
the same tendency into the moral world. The outward 
agents in moral and spiritual changes are those on 
which we chiefly dwell. The power of motives, the 
influence of education, the natural efficacy of instruc- 
tions, appeals, admonitions, warnings, — it is to these 
almost exclusively, and not to any direct operation of 
the Spirit of God, that we are apt to trace changes of 
character. We may be ready, indeed, decorously to 
remark, that no good can be done without the bless- 
ing of God, but we seldom realise the true significance 
of this statement. The interposition of a divine agent 
in every instance of moral improvement may not be 
denied or controverted, but it is too often practically 
ignored. A child grows up gentle, amiable, pious ; 
and when we say that he had the benefit of a careful 
and religious education, we seem to ourselves to have 



SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 



61 



given the whole account of the matter. A careless 
youth develops into a thoughtful and serious manhood, 
and we remark on the sobering and mellowing effect of 
years. An irreligious man becomes devout, and the 
dangerous illness, or the severe domestic affliction, or 
the influence of a Christian friend or minister, has made 
him, we perhaps observe, a wiser and a better man. 
Seldom does the mind naturally turn to the thought — 
"the finger of God is here;" to many it would seem 
fanatical or irrational thus to speak. The idea of a 
mysterious Holy Spirit coming down from the heavens, 
and working in the man's mind, would but too often 
be regarded, if not avowedly, yet in our secret judg- 
ment, as a strange mystical notion peculiar to the do- 
main of theology, but quite apart from our ordinary 
experience, having nothing in common with the plain 
realities of everyday life. 

Now, it is to this habit of mind, this tendency, tacit 
or avowed, to shrink from the supernatural, that the 
text suggests a most striking corrective. For it brings 
before us the consideration that the supernatural is not 
confined to religion ; it bids us look abroad upon the 
common world of sight and sense, and see there, in the 
most familiar processes and phenomena of nature, the 
proofs of an immediate divine agency as mysterious, as 
inexplicable to man as any to which religion appeals. 
Not in the dim region of theological mysteries alone, 
but amidst the sights and sounds of everyday life, we 
move in a world of wonders. Not spiritual things 
only, but every peeping bud, and every waving leaf, 
each glancing sunbeam and glistening dewdrop, the 



62 



SERMON III. 



passing breeze, the falling shower, the rippling stream, 
imply the presence of a mysterious power and agency 
ever secretly working around us. There is a sense, in 
which science, with all its triumphs, returns to the 
creed of the world's infancy, and is compelled to admit 
the immediate presence of a supernatural power in the 
most ordinary movements of nature. For, after all, 
not the most splendid revelations of science have ever 
been able to disclose anything more than the regular 
sequences of events, the ways in which the Author of 
nature generally chooses to work, the self-imposed rules 
of divine agency. Gravitation, light, heat, chemical 
affinity, are only abstractions; they are nothing in 
themselves without a personal will — a living agent 3 
whose mode of working they express. Dead matter, 
however arranged, can never act of itself. Power, 
spontaneous activity, can never reside in dead and 
material things ; it can dwell only in a person, a living, 
thinking, willing agent. A human mechanist may 
leave the machine he has constructed to work without 
his further personal superintendence, because when he 
leaves it, God's laws take it up, and by their aid the 
materials of which the machine is made retain their 
solidity, the steel continues elastic, the vapour keeps 
its expansive power. But when God has constructed 
His machine of the universe, He cannot so leave it, or 
any the minutest part of it, in its immensity and in- 
tricacy of movement, to itself; for, if He retire, there 
is no second God to take care of this machine. Not 
from a single atom of matter can He who made it for 
a moment withdraw His superintendence and support. 



SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 



63 



Each, successive moment, all over the world, the act of 
creation must be repeated. The existence of the world 
witnesses to a perpetuity of creating influence. Active 
omnipresence must flood the universe, or its machinery 
stops, and its very existence terminates. The signs of 
an all-pervading supernatural energy meet us wherever 
we turn. Every leaf waves in it, every plant in all its 
organic processes lives in it ; it rolls round the clouds, 
else they would not move ; it fires the sunbeam, else it 
would not shine ; and there is not a wave that rest- 
lessly rises and sinks, nor a whisper of the wanton 
wind that "bloweth where it listeth," but bespeaks 
the immediate intervention of God. Marvel not, then, 
when it is said that we must be born of the Spirit. If 
not the slightest movement of matter can take place 
without the immediate agency of God, shall we wonder 
that His agency is needed in the higher and more 
subtle processes of mind ? If every echoing wind be- 
speak a present Deity, shall it seem strange to appeal 
to His power in the regeneration of a soul? Each 
time the furrow opens to the ploughshare, or the sail 
of the vessel expands to the breeze, we call in the aid 
of a mysterious agency, without which human efforts 
were vain. Can it be matter of surprise that the same 
mysterious agency must be invoked in every effort to 
break up the hardened soil of the human heart, or to 
communicate to the dull and moveless spirit of man an 
impulse towards a nobler than earthly destiny ? 

II. The Sovereignty, or apparent Arbitrariness, of 
the work of the Spirit of God in regeneration, is another 



64 



SERMON III. 



of those difficulties connected with this doctrine to 
which the illustration of the text seems to point. It 
is this to which our Lord seems to refer when He com- 
pares the Spirit's agency to that of the wind which 
"bloweth where it listeth" that is, with inexplicable 
uncertainty and variableness, or according to laws which 
are beyond the knowledge and control of man. 

And how very much, to human eye, have the rela- 
tions of God with man, as a religious being, been char- 
acterised by an aspect of strange uncertainty and 
arbitrariness ! Eeligion, with all its ennobling influ- 
ences, has not been communicated to man universally 
or indiscriminately. The Spirit of love and life has 
not breathed over every sin-blighted land ; but while 
a few favoured regions have felt its reviving presence, 
and have begun to bloom with a moral beauty that is 
not of this world, others, unvisited by its quickening 
power, remain from age to age in the condition of 
moral wastes, barren as the desert, or rife only with 
weeds and thorns. Nor can human research discover 
any law by which this inequality is ordered. For the 
partial distribution of spiritual blessings to the nations 
we can give no other reason than the inscrutable and 
irresponsible will of a Benefactor who gives and with- 
holds " wheresoever He listeth." 

And as little in the case of individuals as of nations 
can we explain on what principle it is that the gracious 
influences of the Spirit are vouchsafed. In equal pos- 
session of the outward means of improvement, some are 
benefited whilst others continue unaffected. The seed 
of truth springs up into rapid and rich maturity in one 



SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 



65 



mind ; in another, on which perhaps it has been more 
profusely scattered, it remains dormant and unpro- 
ductive. A word spoken in season, the utterance of a 
hallowed name, even a mere look of affectionate re- 
monstrance, will fly straight to the core of some human 
spirit, as if guided by some unerring hand ; whilst, on 
others, all the strength of reason, all the force of logic, 
all the power of eloquence, may be spent, only to recoil 
ineffective as arrows from proof-mail. Front the furnace 
of affliction one heart, on which an irresistible solvent 
has been acting, will come forth softened, subdued, 
spiritualised ; whilst others, from the superficial tender- 
ness of unblessed sorrow, speedily cool down into a 
hardness and insensibility more hopeless than ever. 
And if this diversity of results is to be ascribed, not to 
the variety of outward means, but to the presence or 
absence of an inward influence which alone can render 
them effectual, can we tell why that influence, given 
in one case, should be withheld in any other ? Is the 
hand of Jehovah ever shortened that it cannot save ? 
Is the reservoir of grace so scantily supplied that, 
while some receive the precious dole, others as needy 
must go unrelieved? Or can we ascribe to Infinite 
Love the wayward fitfulness of earthly beneficence — to 
Infinite Wisdom the arbitrary and unreasoning favourit- 
ism of weak and erring men ? If grace be necessary to 
conversion ; if without it an angel of heaven might preach 
with heaven's eloquence, yet all in vain ; and with it, 
from the appeals of feeble human Hps no careless audi- 
tor could retire unaffected, why — are we not tempted to 
ask — is not the Spirit of God poured forth without 

E 



66 



SERMON III. 



measure on every assembly where unconverted souls 
are to be found ? The atmosphere of selfishness broods 
over the soul, and stifles all its glorious capacities of 
excellence. Oh, why is there not an instant response 
to the call, " Awake, 0 north wind ! and come thou 
south ! breathe upon this garden, that the spices thereof 
may flow forth % " The dead in sin — the living, lost, 
never-dying dead — bespread the world, a spectacle 
more awful than in the prophet's vision ; and can it 
be that boundless Mercy surveys it, and yet there is 
no answer to the prayer, " Come from the four winds, 
0 breath ! and breathe upon these dead that they may 
liver' 

To all such questions — the not unnatural expression 
of the mind's anxiety in contemplating the seeming 
arbitrariness of the Spirit's work — we must again reply 
in the words of the text — " Marvel not that it is said 
unto you, Ye must be born of the Spirit." Marvel not 
nor be disquieted at your inability to explain the laws 
that regulate the operations of an infinite Agent ; for 
in a province much more within the range of human 
observation there are familiar agents at work, the opera- 
tions of which are equally inscrutable, arbitrary, incal- 
culable. Think it not strange that the ways of the 
Spirit of God are unaccountable to a mind by which 
even the common phenomena of the wind are irreduc- 
ible to law. " The wind bloweth where it listeth, and 
thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell 
whence it cometh, and whither it goeth : so is every 
one that is born of the Spirit." 

And the force of this illustration it will need little 



SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 



67 



reflection to perceive. For what so fitful, wayward, 
incalculable, as the operations of the wind 1 Who can 
for a single hour foresee, or with certainty pronounce, 
what its course will be ? Sometimes breathing in soft- 
ness, sometimes rushing in storm ; now gently fanning 
the summer fields, or wandering* with scarcely percept- 
ible movement over the vernal earth; anon sweeping and 
raging along with the wild impetuosity of the winter 
blast ; leaving one spot or one region of the earth parched, 
cloudless, motionless ; for days and weeks stirring not 
a branch or leaf, as it hangs droopingly in the dry and 
moveless air, yet at the same time bringing to other 
regions the fertilising influences of refreshing gales and 
showers. And the argument is — If even this simple 
agent so baffle man's highest wisdom to reduce to 
known laws its seemingly wayward movements, shall it 
be thought strange that the ways of the unsearchable 
Spirit of God are governed by no rules which finite 
minds can discern 1 If a phenomenon which, however 
complex the principles or intricate the conditions in- 
volved in it, is still a physical and limited one, present 
to the acutest minds a problem that is insoluble, what 
wonder that they should be baffled by the operations 
of an Agent who is limited by no conditions of time 
and space, and whose every movement is but a part of 
the vast and mysterious scheme of the moral govern- 
ment of the universe ? If the fitful breeze that stirs a 
meadow or ripples a brook be a subject of investigation 
too extensive and complicated for mortal intellect to 
grasp, surely there is little marvel that it cannot explain 
and calculate the movements of that ineffable Power 



63 



SERMON III. 



which works on the scale of infinitude. No ! fully to 
comprehend the measures of the infinite Spirit, so as to 
see them freed from every semblance of obscurity or 
arbitrariness, would be an achievement implying a mind 
infinite as his own ; and surely we may defer that en- 
terprise till finite problems have ceased to baffle us. 

But the illustration in the text may suggest to us 
this further thought, that the arbitrariness which char- 
acterises the Spirit's work is, after all, only apparent, 
and that, beneath seeming irregularity, there is real and 
unvarying law. It is so with the material agent, it is 
so with the spiritual, of which that is the emblem. 
The capriciousness, fitfulness, lawlessness of the wind's 
motions is only in appearance. The wind never really 
does act at random. Its endless inconstancies, its 
ceaseless and unaccountable changes, are the result of 
material laws as fixed and stable as that by which the 
planets revolve, or the sun rises and sets. Science, 
indeed, with all its modern aids and appliances, has 
made but slight progress in the attempt to trace out 
the laws of winds and storms, and perhaps this is a pro- 
vince in which our knowledge must ever be imperfect 
and vague ; but the vagueness and imperfection is not 
in nature but in us. It is only because of the limits of 
our faculties that we cannot explain the reasons of 
every vagary of the restless wind, every motion of each 
everchanging cloud that forms, and floats, and dissi- 
pates, and forms again in the heavens, as easily as we 
can tell why a stone falls to the ground. And so too, 
undoubtedly, it is with that of which the wind is set 
forth as the type, the agency of the Spirit of God. In 



SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 



69 



His most mysterious dealings with, the souls of men, 
God never acts without a reason. Where, to us, there 
seems inconstancy, to Him all is order. "What arro- 
gant impiety rejects as harsh and arbitrary, is, to the 
Mind that alone can comprehend the universe, lumin- 
ous with the traces of beneficence and wisdom. And 
all that to human eye seems dark, unaccountable, cap- 
ricious, in the economy of grace, is so only, we may be 
well assured, because our feeble minds are incompetent 
to grasp the explanation. A time was when the starry 
firmament presented to the eye of man only the aspect 
of a maze of luminous points, scattered hap-hazard, or 
moving at random over the heavens ; but at length, the 
great thought was struck out which evolved from all 
this seeming confusion the most perfect order and har- 
mony. And so, perhaps, a time may come when light 
shall be thrown on many things that seem mysteri- 
ous in the arrangements of Providence and in the 
dispensation of grace, and when the undiscovered 
spiritual law of gravitation shall reduce all seeming 
arbitrariness to perfect order and beauty. But mean- 
while, in presence of the inscrutable order of God's 
government, it is the befitting attitude of a creature 
so weak and ignorant, even in earthly things, as man's 
experience proves hini to be, not to criticise, to ques- 
tion, to doubt, but to submit and to adore. 

III. The reality of the work of regeneration may be 
questioned, finally, because of its secret or imperceptible 
character ; and it is this difficulty which the argument 
of the text seems specially intended to obviate. Mo- 



70 



SERMON III. 



mentous though the change be, which, in regeneration, 
the soul is supposed to undergo, it is one of which we 
have no direct consciousness — no immediate evidence. 
The finger of the mighty Agent is not felt as it works 
in the secret depths of our being. Nor is there any- 
external sign, any glory resting on the countenance, 
any hovering flame or rushing wind, to intimate the 
presence of the heavenly visitant. Unseen He comes, 
unseen He departs. We reach and pass the crisis of 
our spiritual history all unconscious that an event so 
extraordinary is taking place within the breast. And 
it is not strange that a transformation, so utterly 
unevidenced by sense or consciousness, should at first 
sight be regarded as improbable, and that men should 
sometimes "marvel when it is said unto them, Ye 
must be born again." We are accustomed to associate 
great events in man's earthly history with outward stir 
and show, outward pomp and circumstance, and we 
can scarcely divest ourselves of the notion that external 
significance is inseparable from real importance. When 
the heir to earthly wealth or grandeur is born, the 
earliest cry of the feeble babe is the signal for loud and 
universal gratulation, and by a thousand obtrusive 
indications the tidings of the joyous event are borne 
far and wide. When a decisive battle terminates some 
great struggle, in which the nations are interested, the 
shout of victory has scarce died away on the" field till 
it is caught up and reverberated from land to land, and 
by every outward sign that can give expression to 
joyful emotion — by banners, flung out on every height, 
and peals echoing on every breeze — do men strive to 



SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 



71 



mark their sense of the magnitude of the occurrence. 
How strange to be told that an event, infinitely more 
momentous than these in man's history, has taken place 
in silence and secrecy — that a Child of the living God 
— the heir of an inheritance, "before which earthly 
splendours pale — has been born, and yet the event 
been unnoticed and unknown; — that a conflict, in 
which the powers of light and of darkness have been 
engaged, and the results of which time cannot measure, 
has been, in one auspicious hour, decisively terminated, 
and yet that in profoundest secrecy, without one 
whisper of triumph to mark it, the victory has been 
won ! 

But again let us turn to the simple argument of the 
text ; for here we are taught that the association on 
which all such incredulity is based — the asssociation 
between show and reality, outward significance and 
real importance — is an altogether fallacious one. For 
the proof that visibility and greatness, power and 
seeming, are far from inseparable, we are pointed to 
one out of many similar phenomena which daily meet 
our observation in the material world. In nature it 
cannot be questioned that more often than otherwise 
the greatest powers and agencies are invisible. Known 
to exist by their effects, in themselves and in their 
mode of operation they are imperceptible and un- 
known ; so that, to believe only where we see, to 
discredit the existence and agency of all that is incog- 
nisable by sense, would be a maxim as fatal to science 
as to religion. When the magnet draws the iron, 
when the needle turns to the pole, who sees the strange 



72 



SERMON III. 



influence by which the attraction is effected ? what eye 
can discern the infinitely minute threads of influence 
that draw the one object to the other ] Or, when the 
earth and other planets revolve around the sun, and 
the moon and other satellites around those, who can 
perceive any mysterious ether flowing from world to 
world to convey the impulse that moves them % What 
keenest optics can see gravitation? Manifest by the 
mighty results it achieves, this greatest of material 
agents is in itself, and in the mode of its operation, 
unseen. So, too, is it, to name no other instance, with 
that natural agent to which the text specially refers — 
the impalpable, viewless wind. Visible in its manifold 
influences, it, too, is in its essence and operation im- 
perceptible. As you have surveyed the face of nature 
in some tranquil season — the unbreathing summer 
noon, or the hushed twilight hour— every feature of 
the landscape has seemed suffused with calmness, 
every tree hung its motionless head, every unrippled 
brook crept on with almost inaudible murmuring, every 
plant and flower and leaf seemed as if bathed in repose. 
But anon you perhaps perceived a change passing over 
the scene as if at the bidding of some invisible power ; 
— a rushing sound — as of music evoked by invisible 
fingers from the harp of Nature — began to fill your 
ear ; the leaves began to quiver and rustle, the trees to 
bend and shake, the stream to dash onward with 
ruffled breast and brawling sound, and from every 
wood and glade and glen there came forth the intima- 
tion, that a new and most potent agent was abroad and 
working around you. And yet while you marked this 



SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 



73 



change on the face of nature, did you perceive the 
agent that effected it ? Did the wind of heaven take 
visible form and appear as a winged messenger of God's 
will, hurrying hither and thither from object to object ? 
Do you know, and can you describe, the way in which 
he worked, — how his touch fell upon the floweret and 
bade it wave, or his grasp seized the sturdy oak and 
strove with it till it quivered and bent ? No, you can- 
not. You have not penetrated so far into the secrets 
of nature. You have seen only the effects, but not the 
agent or the process of his working. You have seen 
the wind's influences but not itself. But do you there- 
fore marvel, or hesitate to believe that it has been 
indeed abroad and working over the face of the earth ? 
or do you ever doubt whether there be any such agent 
as the wind at all ? No ; you have heard the sound 
thereof, you have witnessed the stir and commotion of 
nature that told of its presence, and so you believe in 
its existence, though you "cannot tell whence it 
cometh, nor whither it goeth." 

So it is with every one that is born of the Spirit. 
You cannot see this mysterious agent any more than 
those natural agents of which I have spoken. But, as 
in the one case so in the other, though the agent is 
invisible, the effects of his operation are manifest. 
You perceive not the passing to and fro of a mysteri- 
ous attraction between God and the soul of man, but 
you will not seldom see, as the needle is drawn to the 
magnet, some sinful soul, hitherto fixed in its worldly 
and selfish insensibility, as if touched by an invisible 
power, beginning to bestir itself, shaking off the torpor 



74 



SERMON III. 



of worldliness and selfishness, and drawn in love and 
devotion to God and heavenly things. You do not 
see the gale from heaven — the breath of the Spirit — 
wafted over any sinner's soul, but ever and anon, if 
you watch carefully the moral history of your fellow- 
men, you may perceive, in the life of one or another 
hitherto careless man, a change more or less marked, — 
the visible witness of a hidden and invisible work. 
Sometimes with gentle touch the Spirit comes. When 
affliction has softened the heart, when solitude or 
bereavement has made the soul susceptible of serious 
thought, when the character is naturally amiable, 
gentle, impressible, when outward circumstances have 
been from childhood favourable to piety, — the Spirit 
of God has often but to breathe, as it were, an insensible 
movement into the moral atmosphere, in order to waft 
into the heart the seeds of holiness, and cause the 
fruits of holiness to spring forth in the life. But some- 
times in far different mood the Spirit comes — as if in 
storm and terror — on the wings of the loud and 
winter wind. When the heart is hardened by sin, or 
rendered stern and cold by long resistance to serious 
impressions, in these and similar cases the Holy Spirit 
has often come in influence of terror and alarm, break- 
ing wildly over the trembling soul, and causing it to 
quake with thoughts of guilt, and death, and judgment, 
and the wrath to come ; and then it has been as if the 
inner world were shaken to the centre, and in the 
groans of its anguish^ or the cries of its penitence — now 
rising into hope, now sinking into despair — the soul 
has given witness how terribly the wind of the Spirit 



SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE, 



75 



was working within it. But neither in His gentle nor 
in His rougher visitations is the working of the Mighty 
Agent ever immediately discernible. Only by its effects, 
— by the fragrance and beauty of a saintly life, its 
truthfulness, gentleness, humility, self-denial ; or, again, 
by evil passions rooted up, inveterate sinful habits 
bent and broken, obstacles to holiness swept away — by 
the sorrow, the self-abasement, the penitence, the 
prayers of a soul at the footstool of infinite Justice 
and Mercy, — only by these, its outward effects, can the 
hidden presence and working of the Holy Spirit be 
recognised. 

It is, then, no marvellous or incredible doctrine, but 
one corroborated by the most familiar analogies, that 
there is a supernatural, sovereign, and secret operation 
of the Spirit of God on every penitent and believing 
soul. And this is a doctrine fraught with many obvious 
practical lessons. For if the agency of the Spirit be, 
as we have seen, a supernatural agency — an agency 
above ordinary means, and apart from which ordinary 
means must prove ineffectual, consider, for one thing, 
how urgent the necessity for securing the Spirit's inter- 
vention. What an arrest would be laid upon many of 
the works of man, if that natural agent, to which we 
have so often referred as the Spirit's type, were sus- 
pended I If the wind of heaven ceased to blow, con- 
ceive how abortive, in many cases, would be all human 
industry and skill. The wind withdrawn, the seas 
and rivers would become leaden and motionless ; the 
sail would hang idle on the mast, and every vessel that 



76 



SERMON III. 



floats the seas, arrested on her progress, would be per- 
petually becalmed. The labours of the husbandman, 
alike with those of the seaman, would be frustrated. 
No healthful showers wafted to our fields, every blade 
would wither, each dry and moveless stalk of grain 
perish in the growing, every green and beautiful thing 
decay from the earth's face. The very physical powers 
of man, deprived of healthful stimulus, would become 
languid, heavy, laborious, and at last incapable of 
action. And thus in a thousand ways the activity of 
man would be in vain, and his utmost ingenuity in the 
selection of means, or perseverance in the employment 
of them, fail of achieving any useful result. 

But equally fatal, in the spiritual world, to the suc- 
cess of all human endeavours, would be the withholding 
of the supernatural grace of the Spirit of God. In 
vain as the sowing of seed on dry and barren soil, our 
reading and teaching, our sacraments aud solemnities, 
if the secret grace of germination aid not our efforts. 
In vain as the spreading of sails beneath windless skies 
every aspiration after holiness, every attempt to break 
away from sin and live for God, if the favouring breath 
of spiritual influence descend not to co-operate with 
our endeavours. Pray, then, for the Spirit. In all 
your efforts to be good or to do good, seek this heavenly 
aid. Despair of success apart from it ; rest not till 
you have obtained it. The wind comes not at the 
sailor's or the husbandman's call ; but in this, blessed 
be God, the earthly type is far transcended by the 
heavenly reality ; for the believer is possessed of a spell 
that can summon the gracious aid of the Spirit in every 



SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 



77 



time of need. The man whose voyage is arrested, and 
to whom delay is ruinous, may long and pray for the 
springing up of the favouring breeze, and yet days and 
weeks may pass, and no answer come. The parched 
earth may crave for moisture, and while the fruits of 
his toils are perishing before his eyes, the husbandman 
may fervently invoke the wind that wafts the shower- 
laden cloud to his fields, and yet the heavens may still 
be above him as brass. But not in spiritual things is 
our gracious Benefactor ever thus inexorable. " Your 
heavenly Father will give His Holy Spirit to them that 
ask Hira." Our progress heavenward need never be 
delayed, the fruits of holiness need never be blighted 
for lack of that heavenly influence. Ask then in faith, 
nothing doubting. God may not will your earthly 
prosperity, but your spiritual welfare is dearer to His 
heart than to your own, and nothing that contributes 
to it shall be wanting to the earnest supplicant. In 
every emergency, in every Christian work and effort, 
therefore, pray for the abundant grace of the Spirit, 
without which you can do nothing, with which you 
can do all things. 

And if the doctrine of the text furnishes us with a 
motive to prayer, not less suggestive is it of encourage- 
ment to effort. For whilst our natural powers soon 
reach their limit, to the supernatural aid on which we 
are encouraged to depend there is none. "With the 
power of God to help him, no man need despair of 
moral recovery. With the infinite resources of God's 
grace at our command, no attainment in holiness is 
beyond our reach. Self-reformation, by the mere 



78 



SERMON III. 



strength of human resolution, soon proves a vain at- 
tempt ; but the effort to repent and turn to God — to 
regain our lost purity and happiness — cannot fail, when 
the very Power that fashioned our mysterious being 
prompts and aids in the work of restoration. What 
man made, man may repair : but the soul is a divine 
work, a thing too noble and delicate, as well as too 
deeply disordered by sin, to be remoulded and restored 
by any finite skill or energy. But not to finite skill or 
energy is the work of restoration committed ; and 
surely we may labour in this work with the most san- 
guine hope — nay, with firm assurance of success, when 
we know that the very Mind and Hand that devised 
and framed our spiritual being are working with us 
for its recovery. "We are labourers together with 
God : ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building." 
Nor, with such inexhaustible and ever accessible help, 
need we confine our endeavours merely to the restor- 
ation of the soul. There is no limit to our possible 
progress and advancement. The richest soil soon 
reaches its limit of productiveness. The enterprise of 
him who seeks earthly wealth is restricted by the ex- 
tent of his capital or credit. But in spiritual things 
you need set no such bounds to your efforts : the soil 
from which the fruits of holiness are gathered, is pro- 
lific beyond all possibility of exhaustion; it is God 
who gives the increase. The treasury from which 
your capital is drawn is one which can never, by your 
largest demands for aid, be impoverished. Why, then, 
should any Christian rest content with past attain- 
ments ? Every beautiful grace, every noble virtue that 



SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 



79 



has ever adorned the saintliest of mankind, may be 
yours. "Why should any man be satisfied with small 
and scanty spiritual gains 1 In divine things there can 
be no avarice ; to the most insatiable desire of wealth 
you may innocently give scope. You are not straitened 
in God, be not straitened in yourselves. 

And again, if the agency of the Spirit is not only 
supernatural, but also sovereign — if in this respect also 
it can be likened to that material agent which is set 
forth as its type, the wind that " bloweth where it list- 
eth" — surely in this aspect, too, the subject is replete 
with practical significance. For does not the very 
uncertainty and seeming fitfulness of nature's influences 
act as a stimulus to the exertions of man % The fair 
wind that has long been waited for, and may speedily 
die away ; the spring-tide that comes only at distant 
intervals, and must be taken at the flood ; the balmy 
season propitious to the husbandman's toils \ the bright 
moments favourable to intellectual exertion, when 
thought flows quick, and the spirits are high, and 
winged fancies come in precious visitations on the soul 
— is there not something in the very uncertainty and 
evanescence of these happy influences and golden op- 
portunities that tends mightily to quicken watchful- 
ness and stimulate effort % And should it not be so 
in spiritual things too? If, explain it as we may, 
there is any similar variableness in the times and sea- 
sons of religious influence, how urgent the motive thus 
presented to Christian vigilance in waiting for every 
favourable opportunity, and to diligence in improving 
it ! It is not for us, indeed, always to know the times 



80 



SERMON III. 



and seasons which God hath put in His own power ; 
but there are, perhaps, none of us who do not know 
from personal experience that ever and anon there come 
to the soul times of visitation — hours of softened feel- 
ing and deepened thoughtfulness, when the things of 
time lose their hold upon us, and the eternal world 
rolls nearer, with all its grand realities, to the spirit's 
eye. And are not these the spring-tides of the soul, 
the seasons propitious to the spiritual husbandry, every 
moment of which gathers round it the importance of 
that eternal harvest to which the rapid hours are bring- 
ing us ? Are not these, in one word, the times when 
the spiritual gales blow freshest and fairest from the 
heavens, and the soul, instinct with life, feels every 
expanded energy yielding to the almost sensible im- 
pulses of the Spirit of Truth and Love ? How precious 
such moments ! Who that reflects on their worth 
would not long and pray and watch for their coming, 
and, while they continue, strain every energy to catch 
to the last breath the blessing which they bring 1 

And, finally, in that other aspect in which we have 
viewed the Spirit's work — as a work secret in itself, 
yet manifest by its effects — -is there not conveyed to us 
a lesson of deepest practical interest i For what inquiry 
so important to each of us as this, Can I discern in my 
character and life the signs of the Spirit's presence — 
the visible proofs of this mighty agent's invisible oper- 
ation 1 Unseen He may come ; unfelt and impercept- 
ible may be His working, as it blends with the secret 
springs of thought and feeling within the breast ; but 
wherever He does work, sooner or later, the result will 



SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 



Si 



"be manifest and unequivocal. The external change, 
indeed, that indicates His presence may be, to all but 
the closest inspection, unapparent. For there is a 
formal and conventional propriety which may spring 
from many motives short of religious principle — from 
natural amiableness, from the absence of strong tempta- 
tions, from the influence of circumstances, from regard 
to the opinions of men ; and the transition from that 
outward morality which is the product of such motives, 
to that holiness which is the fruit of the Spirit's work, 
may, in form at least, be but slightly observable. But 
slight or marked to the inspection of others, to the in- 
ward consciousness of the renewed mind itself the re- 
sults of the Divine agency will, I repeat, sooner or later 
be obvious and unmistakable ; for that result will be not 
formal, but real — not outward reformation merely, but 
a change of heart — not surface goodness, but spirituality 
of mind and motive flowing out into holiness of life. 

Apply this test, then, to your own consciousness, 
and be satisfied with none less searching. "If any 
man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His." 
" Except a man be born of the Spirit, he cannot see 
the kingdom of God." Would you discover whether 
you "have the Spirit of Christ," — whether yours is the 
destiny of those who have been "born of the Spirit ?" 
Then let not the question be, " Am I leading such a 
life as to escape the censure or win the commendation 
of the world i " for the stream may rise as high as its 
source, and the world itself may supply you with 
motive sufficient to reach its own standard of moral 
elevation. Let it not even suffice to ask, " Am I not 

F 



> 



82 



SERMON III. 



now a wiser and better man than once I was % — have I 
not abandoned many former irregularities of conduct, 
and ceased to gratify many passions to which in other 
days I yielded % " For it needs not the interposition 
of the Spirit of God to dry up the passions of youth, 
and extinguish the fires of sensuality within us ; the 
inevitable influence of years will serve well enough for 
that ; and the transformation of the heedless, or even 
vicious youth, into the sober and prudent man, may 
come as independently of principle, as much irrespec- 
tively of a change of heart, as the silvering of the hair 
or the whitening of the cheek. But the inquiry must 
be, " Am I leading a holy life from real, heartfelt, self- 
devotion to Christ % Are my inward principles, feelings, 
motives, such as will approve themselves to the eye of 
Him who seeth in secret % Do I not only outwardly 
abstain from what is wrong, but do I hate and shrink 
from sin in my inmost heart ; pained when I am be- 
trayed into it, glad when I gain the victory over it % 
Am I exercising a control, not over my outward con- 
duct merely, but over my thoughts and affections- 
over my secret habits, dispositions, tempers % Is God 
so reverenced and loved in the inmost shrine of my 
being, that I strive to expel thence every evil thought, 
every vain, impure, selfish feeling, and to keep the 
temple of a pure heart sacred to Him alone V* By the 
response which an honest heart yields to such questions 
as these may we elicit the true answer to that other 
and most momentous question which involves and 
comprehends them all, " Have I been born of the 
Spirit of God?" 



SERMON IV. 



PART FIRST. 
THE INVISIBLE GOD. 

"No man hath seen God at any time ; the only begotten Son, which is in 
the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him."— John, i. 18. 

To see God ! Has any created mind ever known what 
is included in these simple words 1 Has the highest 
finite intelligence ever fathomed their meaning? Is 
there any intellect but that of Deity itself which can 
comprehend the full sweep of their grandeur ? 

To see God — to look face to face upon the Supreme 
— every intervening veil of sense withdrawn, to gaze 
upon that awful Presence, of which all created excel- 
lence is but the faint reflection ! What sights of beauty, 
and wonder, and awe, on which mortal eye has ever 
rested— what visions of uncreated glory that have ever 
passed before the imagination of man, can convey to 
the mind a conception of the vision of God % 

To see God ! What is the highest exercise of a 
believer's faith but to catch some wavering, transient 
glimpse of Jehovah's glory? What is the most ex- 
quisite happiness of any soul in Christ, but to rise, 
even for a moment, in thought and aspiration, into the 



84 



SERMON IV.- PART I. 



presence of the Infinite Good and Fair ? What consti- 
tutes the very bliss of heaven, the joy of pure and 
glorified spirits before the throne, but to "see the 
King in His beauty V 

Yet it is declared in the text that " no man hath 
seen God at any time." "Whom no man hath seen, 
nor can see," — writes another apostle. He is designated 
" The Invisible God," and again, " The King Eternal, 
Immortal, Invisible." Is it then so ? Must we, indeed, 
repress every longing of desire, every yearning of 
devout and loving hearts, after the nearer and brighter 
light of our Father's countenance ? " Oh that I might 
see Him !" — is not this sometimes the thought of the 
doubting and troubled spirit i " Oh that it were pos- 
sible for that Great Being, if indeed He exist, to break 
through, even for a moment, the secrecy and stillness 
of creation, and by the visible manifestation of His 
person, to set my doubts and difficulties for ever at 
rest." " Oh that I might see Him ! " has not this been 
the involuntary cry of many a desponding heart, when 
the light of God's love has seemed to be withdrawn, 
and the darkness of spiritual desertion has gathered 
over the soul 1 — " Oh that I knew where I might find 
Him, that I might come even to His seat ! I go for- 
ward, but He is not there, and backward, but I cannot 
perceive Him. He hideth Himself that I cannot see 
Him. Strange that He should be ever near, yet ever 
distant; that the Being for whom my heart longs 
should be always beside me, and yet communication 
with Him be impossible,— that in every movement of 
nature, in every passing breeze, in every glancing sun- 



THE INVISIBLE GOD, 



85 



beam — nay, in every throb of my pulse, and every 
thought of my mind — there should be the indication 
of a Father's nearness, whose face I yet can never see !" 
Or again, when the believer contemplates in thoughtful 
moments the spectacle of human ungodliness — when 
he looks round on a world where but too often God is 
forgotten, His laws dishonoured, His very existence 
disowned — when he watches the slender success which 
often attends the most earnest efforts for the moral 
good of mankind — how often does the wish rise to his 
lip, " Oh that men might see Him — that it were pos- 
sible for the heavens above them to dispart, and that 
Great Being, the silent and awful Witness of sin, to 
reveal Himself even for a moment to their sight, and 
to arrest, by the spectacle of the offended majesty of 
the heavens, the folly and wickedness of man ! " But 
in vain all such longings. Neither to convince the 
doubting, nor to comfort the desponding, nor to arouse 
the ignorant and profane, does God break through the 
awful seclusion of the universe, or withdraw for a 
moment the veil that hides Him from human sight. 
There are insuperable hindrances in this our imperfect 
state of being to any immediate vision of God. There 
are reasons which render it impossible, so long at least 
as we dwell in this region of sense and sin, that, with- 
out some obscuring medium to dim the full blaze of the 
Divine glory, human eye should be permitted to behold 
the face of God. We may linger at the foot of the 
mount, but it is a light inaccessible and full of glory 
that rests on its summit ; and even the most favoured 
of mortals, in the hour when holy contemplation brings 



36 



SERMON IV.-PART I. 



them nearest to the throne, are debarred from all 
further approach by the stern prohibition, " Thou canst 
not see my face ; for there shall no man see God and 
live." 

Yet whilst the text intimates that "no man hath 
seen God at any time," it further teaches us that " the 
only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, 
He hath declared Him ; " and our Lord is elsewhere 
described as " the image of the Invisible God ; " and 
again, as "the brightness of the Father's glory, and 
the express image of His person Moreover, Jesus 
himself, in answer to the inquiry of a disciple, declares, 
" He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." 

Two truths, then, are obviously brought before us in 
this passage of Scripture — the truth, in the first place, 
that God, essential or absolute Deity, is to us, in our 
present state of being, invisible ; and the truth, secondly, 
that Jesus Christ is the declaration or manifestation of 
God to men. 

I. God is invisible. We cannot see him. "We are, 
in this world, debarred from looking upon the face or 
discerning the immediate presence of Deity. Why is 
it so ? If it would contribute to the happiness of the 
saint, or check the sinner in his course of wickedness, 
to behold God, why does God remain invisible 1 

Now, in reflecting on this question, it will occur to 
you as one consideration, that it is naturally impossible 
for what is spiritual to be perceived by sense. There 
are even material agents in existence around us so 
subtle as to elude the cognisance of the senses. There 



THE INVISIBLE GOD, 87 

are powers in nature whose ever-present influence we 
perceive, yet which themselves are never directly dis- 
cerned. The varied forms and colours of material 
objects around us the eye can detect, but not the latent 
electricity that pervades them. The masses and motions 
of the planetary bodies are appreciable by the sight ; 
but the keenest organs of sense cannot see gravitation, 
cannot detect that mysterious power, as it flies through 
space, binding orb to orb. And if thus on the con- 
fines, so to speak, of the material and spiritual worlds, 
there are agents impalpable to sense, much more, when 
we pass those limits, do we enter into a region where 
bodily organs fail us, and a vision and faculty far more 
divine is needed. Who has seen thought 1 What eye 
has ever rested on that mysterious essence which we 
designate mind, soul, spirit? If it be that spiritual 
intelligences surround us, if millions of spiritual beings 
walk the earth both when we wake and sleep, yet, as 
they pass hither and thither on their heavenly minis- 
tries, does the faintest sign of the presence of these 
glorious beings ever flash on the dull sense of man % 
Nay, are we not dwellers in a world of embodied 
spirits, holding continual intercourse with them, wit- 
nessing constantly the proofs of their existence and 
the effects of their activity ; yet has one human spirit 
ever become visible to another % No ! it is but the 
forms of spirit that are visible to sense. We see in the 
busy world around us the mere houses of souls. 

In this sense, then, God is now and ever must be 
invisible. If even a finite spirit cannot be seen by the 
bodily eye, how much less the Infinite Spirit % Finite 



88 



SERMON IV.— PART I. 



spirits may indeed be in some measure outwardly re- 
presented and recognised, when localised in bodily 
forms. Human souls may be identified by the material 
shapes with which they are clothed. But even in 
their case there is something nobler in spirit than the 
fairest form of human beauty or grace or majesty can 
depict. The robe is often unworthy of the wearer. 
And how, then, can the Infinite Spirit ever thus be 
made known? How can He be localised in matter 
whom the Heaven of heavens cannot contain 'I What 
corporeal organisation can ever adequately represent 
the Omniscient Mind % The material universe itself is 
but a feeble expression of God's illimitable greatness. 
Beyond all created forms of beauty there is ever a 
"glory that excelleth," which the imagination cannot 
conceive ; nor does it seem possible for even Omnipo- 
tence to fashion out of matter an adequate embodiment 
of itself. Could we entertain for a moment the sup- 
position of God condescending to contrive some re- 
splendent form, some radiant shape of superhuman 
majesty and loveliness, by which to convey to man a 
conception of His spiritual glory, we might conceive 
the universe to be searched in vain for the materials of 
such a production. We might give the rein to fancy, 
and imagine the sun robbed of its glory and the stars 
of their splendours, and heaven, earth, sea, skies, all 
the myriad worlds in space combining to surrender 
whatever of beauty or grandeur they contain; still 
would the result be miserably insufficient to portray 
the unapproachable glory of the invisible Being of God. 
" These are but parts of His ways ; how little a portion 



THE INVISIBLE GOD. 



89 



is heard of Him ! but the thunder of His power who 
can understand ] " 

But if God cannot be seen by the eye of sense, is an 
immediate mental vision of God equally inconceivable ? 
Is there no possibility of a direct and intuitive vision 
of spiritual objects by the mind, corresponding to that 
of sensible objects by the bodily organ of sight 1 Can- 
not souls see face to face ? And is it simply because 
the thing is impossible that we are in this world pre- 
cluded from beholding God 1 

Now to this it must be answered, that so far from 
being impossible, an immediate mental or spiritual 
vision of God is both conceivable in thought and ex- 
pressly revealed in Scripture. It is possible for spiritual 
beings, if we may so speak, to see into each other ; for 
we know that He to whom all hearts are open reads 
our unuttered thoughts and feelings, and there is 
nothing to hinder Him from bestowing on us an inferior 
measure of the same mysterious power of soul- vision, 
so that the soul might be rendered capable of seeing 
into God as God sees into it, of " knowing even as it is 
known." 

To aid our conceptions of this vision of God, enter- 
tain for a moment the supposition that we were en- 
dowed with the power of seeing directly into the mind 
of a fellow-mam The thoughts which delight us when 
we read them in the works of earthly genius, had a 
real existence in the mind of the poet or philosopher 
before they were moulded into words ; and forasmuch 
as even the noblest language is often but the feeble and 
inadequate expression of the still more noble thoughts 



90 



SEEM ON IV.-PART I. 



that glow within the breast, our delight, we can con- 
ceive, would be much greater, our privilege much 
higher, were it possible to dispense with the poor 
medium of language altogether, to look at once into 
the soul of the great thinker, and to see his grand con- 
ceptions as they burst into being on the surface of the 
spirit. So, again, the idea of beauty is prior to the 
external realisation of it ; it exists in the mind of the 
great artist before he labours to give visible expression 
to it in colour and form ; and it is ever the character- 
istic of great genius in art that it never satisfies itself, 
never fully reaches its own ideal, and that the creation 
of the hand, even when its touch is most delicate, lags 
far behind the rarer grace and beauty with which the 
soul is on fire. So that if even the comparatively faint 
embodiment of the beautiful in conception affords so 
much gratification when presented to the eye in the 
breathing marble or on the glowing canvass, we can 
perhaps imagine what would be the purer and more 
exquisite delight of the observer, were he endowed 
with a faculty of spiritual vision by which he could 
gaze at once on the inner types of beauty, the fresh 
undimmed originals hung up in the soul's picture-gal- 
lery, instead of looking only on the tamer copies which 
the hand produces. 

Now, if we will but rise to a higher region of contem- 
plation, and entertain for a moment the idea of one 
gifted with this power of soul- vision, who should be 
permitted to see immediately into the mind of God, to 
gaze directly on the thoughts and conceptions of that 
Infinite Mind which is the origin of all truth, beauty, 



THE INVISIBLE GOD. 



91 



goodness, we shall have before us that which the Scrip- 
tures represent as constituting the chief element of the 
felicity of saints in heaven, the vision of Deity. The 
Bible, Providence, the visible creation, are God's 
thoughts, conveyed to us in outward expression — by 
words, symbols, material manifestations. But the grand 
ideas of Scripture existed in the Mind of the Infinite 
Spirit before they found utterance through the imper- 
fect medium of human speech ; and the conception of 
the universe, with all its beauty, and order, and har- 
mony, was in the mind of the Creator ere it took form 
in the visible splendours of earth, and sea, and skies. 

Conceive, then, what it would be to rise above and 
beyond these outward forms and shadows, — to look, 
not on the mere borrowed light of truth, but on that 
Light Ineffable from whence the noblest earthly inspir- 
ations have ever caught their fire, — to discern not 
merely faint reflections and representations of divine 
love through the dim cold atmosphere of earthly ordin- 
ances, but, heart to heart with God, to dwell where 
happy souls revel unsated, undazzled, in the Essential 
Element of Love. Or, when you look on some glori- 
ous scene of this world's loveliness — on mountain, lake, 
and forest breaking into beauty in the morning light, 
or flooded with the golden noontide, or softened, sub- 
dued, half concealed, half revealed, beneath the trem- 
ulous splendours of the nightly heavens — conceive what 
it would be to look on that Mind, of which even all 
this earthly glory is but the faint transcript, and to 
gaze directly and immediately upon the types of beauty 
there. And of this the Bible tells us that the soul of 



92 



SERMON IV.-PART J. 



man is capable. The veil that hides from us the all- 
glorious Father of spirits shall one day be withdrawn. 
The spiritual eye shall be quickened to look into the 
heart and life of the universe. The intercepting medium 
of sense shall be swept away, and the soul of the re- 
deemed laid bare to the ineffable brightness and beauty 
of God streaming full-orbed around it. " Blessed are 
the pure in heart/' it is written, " for they shall see 
God." " Beloved, now are we the sons of God ; and it 
doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know 
that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for 
we shall see Him as He is." " Now we see through a 
glass darkly, but then face to face ; now I know in part, 
but then shall I know even as also I am known." 
" They shall see His face, and His name shall be on 
their foreheads. And they need no candle, neither 
light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light." 

The idea, then, of an immediate vision of God, in- 
volves no impossibility. Though God cannot be seen 
by the bodily eye, there is a capacity in the soul which 
needs only to be developed in order to our attaining an 
immediate intuition of the all-present God. There is 
nothing incredible, nothing in the nature of things im- 
possible in the supposition, that at any moment the 
great Ruler of the Universe might break forth from the 
awful seclusion of eternity, and by the manifestation of 
His presence at once consummate the happiness of His 
people and arrest the ungodly in the midst of their sins. 
The question, therefore, recurs, Why is such an inter- 
position withheld? Why is the immediate sight of 
God reserved for the future world ? Why is it the ir- 



THE INVISIBLE GOD. 



93 



reversible law of the present, that " no man hath seen 
God at any time ? " 

Now to this question I answer, that the invisibility 
of God seems to be a necessary condition of the two- 
fold character of our present state of being, as a state 
of trial, and as a state of training. 

View the present life, first, in the aspect of a state 
of trial, and you will see that such an economy neces- 
sitates the invisibility of God. For the idea of a state 
of trial is that of a condition of things in which neither 
the motives to good nor the motives to evil are of an 
overwhelming and irresistible character. There can be 
no trial where there is no possibility of error or failure. 
If a man's love of truth is to be tested, truth must not 
blaze before him with self-evident clearness and vivid- 
ness. Clear enough for the candid and earnest inquirer 
to find it out, it must at the same time be obscure enough 
to escape the observation of the careless or prejudiced. 
If a man's love of goodness is to be tested, the conse- 
quences of goodness or wickedness must not be ren- 
dered so inevitable and instantaneous that only mad- 
ness would hesitate to choose between them ; on the 
contrary, the trial of moral principle will then be the 
most searching when holiness partakes the most of the 
character of a struggle or conflict, and the penalties of 
sinful pleasure are distant and seemingly uncertain. 

Now there can be no question that our condition in 
the present life corresponds, in a great measure, to this 
conception of a state of trial. For whilst we must ex- 
clude from our minds the idea of any such probation 
as would involve in it a meritorious title to the rewards 



94 



SERMON IV.-PART I. 



of the future life, yet it is plain that we are placed in a 
condition in which truth and error, good and evil, life 
and death, are set before us, in which we are left on 
our own responsibility to choose between these alter- 
natives, and in which the possibility of a wrong choice 
is not precluded. Divine truth does not pour itself 
like the light of the sun upon heedless eyes, or force 
its appeals, as by mighty thunderings and voices, upon 
inattentive ears. Not even the fundamental truths of 
religion, such as the Existence and Providence of God, 
are so obtruded on the attention, or supported by such 
overwhelming evidence, as to constrain the assent of 
the reluctant or careless mind. Notwithstanding all 
the light of reason and of revelation, these are still but 
the " open secrets " of the universe, seen only by the 
watchful eye — the " still small voices " from the eter- 
nal world, heard only by the willing and attentive ear : 
it is possible, sad experience proves, amid the din and 
distraction of earthly things, to remain blind and deaf 
to these eternal realities. And as with the truth of 
God, so is it with the claims of His law. The unholy 
are not forced into obedience by any overwhelming in- 
terposition of the Lawgiver. No audible voice from 
the heavens alarms the sinner in his career of wicked- 
ness. No lightning of vengeance shoots athwart his 
path, nor frown of visible wrath darkens the sky over 
his head. No portentous form passes before him, to 
blast him with the sight of the incensed Majesty he 
scorns. Creation preserves an awful stillness, an appar- 
ent indifference, around the transgressor, so that it is 
possible for men to forget and contemn the Almighty, 



THE INVISIBLE GOD. 



95 



or to deem Him "altogether such an one as them- 
selves." 

But in order to the maintenance of such an economy, 
it is plainly necessary that God should remain invisible. 
If God were seen, refusal to helieve would be impos- 
sible ; if there were an immediate manifestation of the 
awful presence of the world's Almighty Kuler, disobe- 
dience would be madness, and yet obedience would be 
no longer the sign of love. Scepticism and faith, im- 
piety and virtue, would alike come to an end. The 
holiness of the saint would be no longer the triumph 
of faith over uncertainty ; the very energies of wicked- 
ness would be paralysed in the sinner's breast. The 
great Master of the Household has for a while with- 
drawn, and left His servants without any visible in- 
spection, that by their diligence or remissness in His 
absence their fidelity may be tested. But His reap- 
pearance would put an end to the trial ; for the most 
careless servant alike with the most dutiful and devoted 
bestirs himself when the master's step is heard on the 
threshold, or the watchful eye of a visible authority is 
fixed upon him. A time, indeed, is coming, when, by 
such a visible manifestation of His person, the moral 
Governor of the universe shall put a period to probation, 
and when the secret Witness shall become the open 
and Omniscient Judge. Of that time it is written that 
then " every eye shall see Him, and they also which 
pierced Him ; " that the faithful shall " behold His face 
in righteousness, and be satisfied with His likeness," 
and the unbelieving call on the " rocks and mountains 
to fall on them, and hide them from the face of Him 



96 



SERMON IV.— PART I. 



that sitteth on the throne." But meanwhile, in calm 
and unbroken stillness, the economy of trial proceeds, 
and the Almighty Euler hides His person and " holds 
back the face of His throne." 

Equally does the invisibility of God seem to be con- 
nected with the aspect of the present life as a state of 
training or discipline. Our condition in this world is 
that of beings who are undergoing not merely a process 
of trial by which their future destiny is to be decided, 
but also a process of training by which they are to be 
fitted for it ; and the immediate manifestation of God 
to the soul is reserved till that process be complete. 
The faculty by which God is to be discerned is yet, 
even in the holiest of men, imperfect and undeveloped, 
and to the immature moral sensibility the full vision of 
God, if possible at all, would be intolerable as the 
blaze of the noonday sun to the weak or diseased organ 
of sight. For it must be considered that, in order to 
the perception and enjoyment of spiritual objects, there 
must be a previous preparation in the soul of the per- 
cipient. To know and appreciate Mind — its greatness, 
goodness, beauty — there must be a kindred spirit, a 
type of these same qualities in the soul of the beholder. 
The irrational animal recognises his master's person ; 
but that which truly constitutes the man — the mind, 
spirit, character — is, and ever must be, to the lower 
nature, invisible. Thought, reason, purity, reverence 
— intellectual and moral qualities, though incessantly 
displayed before it, are a blank to the mere animal ; 
and before it can perceive such qualities it must become 
possessed of them ; it must be raised to rationality 



THE INVISIBLE GOD. 



97 



before it can know and appreciate the rational. So 
again, a child, or a man of grovelling and uncultured 
mind, though living in immediate contact with one of 
lofty, thoughtful, refined nature, cannot truly be said 
to see or know him. Present to each other from day 
to day, it is yet only a bodily contiguity which obtains 
between natures so opposite ; there is no spiritual com- 
munion or recognition, no vision of soul by soul. 
Above all, moral natures must be like, in order to 
know each other. To the impure, the sensual, the 
selfish, the perception of the holy and pure is an 
impossibility. Amidst worldly and evil natures, holi- 
ness isolates the good. Selfishness is a non-conductor 
of the divine. In the closest local proximity to the 
unholy, a pure and heavenly spirit is removed more 
widely beyond their range of vision than if oceans 
rolled between them ; it preserves amidst them a 
divine incognito. And before the veil can be dropped, 
and the pure soul reveal its inner beauty to the morally 
defiled, the latter must needs undergo a complete 
renewal of nature, a transformation and discipline into 
kindred goodness. 'Now, much more, without holiness, 
must it be impossible to see God. No external vision 
or revelation could disclose the Infinitely Holy to 
natures imperfect and sinful. They might be taken to 
heaven, and stand beside the everlasting throne, yet 
would the lustrous purity of its great Occupant be all 
dark and unapparent to them. Divine Being, in its 
wondrous manifestations, might play around the unre- 
newed mind, but it would be as a luminous atmosphere 
bathing blind eyes, or sweet music rippling round deaf 

G 



98 



SERMON IV.— PART I. 



ears ; the heavenly effluence could not pass inwards, 
could wake no thrill of appreciation, no sympathetic 
delight within the souL There must, in short, be 
something godlike in us before we can see and know 
God; we must be "like Him" before we can "see 
Him as He is." And into this divine affinity, this 
penetrative moral insight, it is one great end of the 
Christian's life on earth to train him. By every holy 
deed, by every spiritual aspiration, by each sacrifice of 
inclination to duty, of passion to principle, of the way- 
ward human will to God's, the spiritual instincts of the 
believer are becoming more refined, his spiritual per- 
ceptions more acute. Not one fervent prayer, not one 
act of earnest thoughtful intercourse with God in holy 
ordinances, but is strengthening the wing of aspiration 
and purifying the eye of faith, — training the spirit to 
rise nearer to the region of eternal light, and to bear its 
divine effulgence with more undazzled gaze. . The time 
will come when this process shall be completed — when 
love shall be refined from all admixture of selfishness 
— when purity, freed from all disturbing objects, shall 
quiver true to the centre of right, and the soul to its 
inmost depths, in heart, breath, and being, assimilated 
to God, shall be prepared to reflect, without one dim- 
ming shadow, the beams of infinite beauty. But 
meanwhile, and so long as aught of earthly imperfection 
adheres to it, not only is the soul unprepared for the 
full enjoyment of God, but it is probable that imme- 
diate vision would involve emotions too overwhelming 
for its feeble capacities. As there is a degree of light 
which, to human eye, is equivalent to darkness ; so 



THE INVISIBLE GOD. 



99 



there are thoughts and conceptions under which man's 
feeble apprehension sinks, and emotions too big for 
human heart to hold. Even in our earthly experience 
there have been occasions in which great and sudden 
illapses of feeling — the joy, for instance, of unexpected 
meetings with lost or long -absent friends, or the 
thrilling sense of escape from seemingly inevitable 
danger or death — have proved too much for the heart's 
capacity of emotion, and the weight of rapture has 
broken the cup which it filled. Indeed it is just 
because the greatest minds approach most nearly the 
limits of human reason, and converse with thoughts 
which strain by their grandeur the very largest capacity 
of thinking, that great wit is, proverbially, to madness 
near allied. But all thoughts, all emotions, possible 
to man on earth, make but slight demand upon his 
powers compared with those which, were the barriers 
thrown down that now shut out God and eternity, 
would come rushing in upon the soul ! What mind, 
what heart, would be able to endure such august reve- 
lation i Surely we may well believe that such a vision 
is only for the soul that has been trained, purified, 
enlarged by long-continued fellowship with God on 
earth ; that while our spiritual education is yet incom- 
plete, it is in mercy that the curtain of sense is kept 
drawn, and that there is compassion to our earthly 
weakness in the law, apparently so stern, "that no 
man shall see God at any time." 



SERMON IV. 



PART SECOND. 
TEE MANIFESTATION OF TEE INVISIBLE GOD. 

" No man hath seen God at any time ; the only begotten Son, which is in 
the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him."— John, i. 18. 

No immediate knowledge or vision of God, then, is 
possible in our present state of being. But provision 
has been made for the attainment of a mediate or re- 
presentative knowledge of Him. Of the invisible God, 
Jesus Christ is the image or manifestation ; or, as the 
text expresses it, "The only begotten Son, which is 
in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." 

The obvious import of these words is, not that Jesus 
Christ has told or taught us verbally who and what 
God is, but that in His own person and life He is the 
silent inarticulate manifestation of God to the world. 
A child may declare or describe to you the appearance 
and character of his father ; a pupil may tell you of his 
teacher ; an author may give an account of himself in 
his book ; but there may be in each of these cases an 
involuntary and indirect description, much more clear 
and emphatic than the direct one. For in his writings, 
the author, especially if he be an earnest writer, un- 



TEE MANIFESTATION OF GOD. 



101 



consciously portrays himself, so that we may know as 
much of the heart and soul of a favourite author by 
familiarity with his books, as if we had lived for years 
in personal intercourse with him. So the pupil has 
caught the revered master's manner ; or the child bears, 
not only in his person, but in his temper, habits, senti- 
ments, prevailing tone of thought and feeling, a strong 
family-likeness to the parent ; and though there may 
be much in the father which, from inferiority of talents 
or attainments, the character of the child may be in- 
adequate to represent, yet,, according to his measure, 
he may convey to us a better idea of what the father is 
than by any express and formal description of him we 
could attain. 

Now, so it is in the case before us. The infinitely 
wise and holy One by personal intercourse man has 
never known ; but there is, if we may so speak, a book 
in which the whole mind and heart of God is written 
— a living epistle or Word of God, which may be read 
and known of men. The divine Father dwells in inac- 
cessible light ; but from His presence one hath visited 
our earth, the exact reflection of the Father's being and 
character, the " brightness of His glory and the express 
image of His person." Let us contemplate this divine 
portraiture, this celestial light shining through an 
earthly medium, — let us behold "in the face of Jesus 
Christ the light of the knowledge of the glory of God." 

How does Jesus manifest the Father 1 He does so, 
I answer, by His person, by His life and character, 
and especially by His sufferings and death. 

By the constitution of His person, J esus is to us a 



102 SERMON 1V.-PART II. 

manifestation of God. The incarnation, the mysterious 
embodiment of the divine in the form of the human, 
meets a deep necessity of our nature, supplying, as it 
does, to our feeble apprehensions, a visible, palpable 
object on which they may fix in the effort to think of 
God, and to our sympathies and affections in the 
endeavour to love Him.* For every one must have 
felt how difficult it is to form any conception of a pure 
and infinite spirit, on which the mind can rest with 
satisfaction : how much more difficult so to realise such 
a being as to cling to Him with a simple human love ! 
We need the thought of God to be to us a thought of 
power and persuasiveness — an idea, not after which 
the mind, even in its loftier and more reflective moods, 
must strain with conscious effort, but which can be 
summoned up instantly, at any moment, a spell of 
potent influence amidst the pressing temptations of the 
world. But the idea of a pure Spiritual Essence, with- 
out form, without passions, without limits, pervading 
all, comprehending all, transcending all, is too vague 
and abstract for common use. It may furnish lofty 
exercise for philosophic minds, but it eludes the intel- 
lectual grasp of those of rougher mould ; it may visit 
the soul in quiet and meditative hours, but the ethereal 
vision vanishes when we turn where its presence is most 
needed, amid the coarser cares and conflicts of our 
daily life. Besides, as I have said, the mere abstract 
conception of the Spiritual God is not less foreign to 
our human sympathies and affections than remote from 

* See this subject fully discussed in Archbishop Whately's 
( Essays.' 



THE MANIFESTATION OF GOD. 



103 



our finite apprehensions. The devout heart yearns 
after a Personal God. It craves for something more 
than the works of God, however replete with proofs of 
His power and glory ; it wants to get near Himself. 
Its instinctive desire is after a Father and a Friend — a 
loving ear into which its sorrows may be poured — a 
loving heart on w T hich its weariness may rest. But 
Omnipresence, Omnipotence, Omniscience, Being with- 
out form or place, Existence without beginning or end, 
Eternal Eest without change or emotion — these in their 
very sublimity constitute a notion, which tends to 
repel rather than to attract, to overwhelm and crush 
rather than gently to raise and foster our human sym- 
pathies and desires. Our mortal feebleness shrinks 
from it in trembling awe. The heart cannot feed on 
sublimities. We cannot make a home of this cold 
magnificence ; we cannot take Immensity by the hand. 
The soul lost in such contemplations, like a trembling 
child wandering on some mountain solitudes,' longs 
amidst all this vastness and grandeur for the sound of 
some familiar voice to break the stillness, or the sight 
of some sheltered spot in which it may nestle with the 
sense of friendliness and security. 

Now that which is thus the deep-felt want of our 
natures, is most fully and adequately met in the Person 
of Jesus Christ. For here is One whom, while we may 
reverence and adore as God, we can think of as clearly, 
and love as simply, trustingly, tenderly, as the best 
known and loved of our earthly friends. Here is a 
point around which our shadowy conceptions may con- 
dense, a focus towards which our aimless aspirations 



104 



SERMON IV.— PART II. 



may tend. Here we have set before us the Boundless 
limited in form, the Eternal dwelling in time, the 
Invisible and Spiritual God revealed in that Word of 
Life which human eyes have seen and human hands 
have handled. No longer, when we read or muse or 
pray, need our minds be at a loss, our thoughts wander 
forth through eternity in search of a Living God. To 
Him who lived among us, breathed our common air 
and spoke our human speech, loved us with a human 
heart and healed and helped us with human hands — 
to Him, as God, every knee may bow, and every tongue 
confess. No longer in our hidden joys and griefs, in 
our gratitude and our contrition, in our love and in 
oar sorrow, when our full hearts long for a heavenly 
confidant, to whom as to no earthly friend we may lay 
bare our souls, need we feel as if God were too awful 
a Eeing to obtrude upon Him our insignificance or to 
offer to Him our tenderness or our tears. " Come unto 
Me," is the invitation of this Blessed One, so intensely 
human though so gloriously divine — "unto Me," in 
whose arms little children were embraced, on whose 
bosom a frail mortal lay ; " unto Me," who hungered, 
thirsted, fainted, sorrowed, wept, and yet whose love 
and grief and pains and tears were the expression of 
emotions felt in the mighty heart of God — "Come 
unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I 
will give you rest." 

Not merely, however, by the constitution of His 
Person, but also by the moral beauty of His character 
and life, does Jesus Christ declare or manifest the 
unseen God. God is mirrored in the moral being of 



THE MANIFESTATION OF GOD. 



105 



Christ. In that pure and lofty nature there was 
exhibited an image or likeness of the Holy and Spiri- 
tual God, such as the world before had never witnessed. 
Of all God ? s works, the soul of man is that by which 
He can best be manifested, by its structure it is the 
most transparent medium of the Divine. There is, 
indeed, much in God which humanity, even in its 
purest and loftiest type, is inadequate to represent. 
There is much in a great painting which the en- 
graving taken from it fails to convey to the eye : for, 
though it may be an accurate representation of the 
drawing, it tells nothing of the beauty and harmony of 
colour in the original. There is much in the glori- 
ous landscape, or the living animated countenance, 
which the sun-picture, however correct up to its mea- 
sure, leaves unexpressed : lines, form, contour, relative 
proportions, may be accurately rendered, but the colour, 
the expression, the variety, the life, cannot be arrested 
and reproduced, even by the limner power of light. 
So there is that in the nature of the infinite God which 
no copy graven on a finite soul, however noble — no 
reflection caught and fixed on the page of a human life, 
however holy and beautiful, can in the very nature of 
things fully render. Yet, though the finite can never 
be an exhaustive representation of the Infinite, of all 
finite manifestations of God, a perfect soul, a pure and 
holy mind, would be the noblest and the best. God 
can be imaged in a great and holy life, as He cannot be 
by the grandest objects which the material universe 
contains. If the soul of a little child were morally 
stainless, in that feeble tiny thing which a rude breath, 



106 



SERMON IV.— PART II. 



it might seem, could crush, there would be a nobler 
and nearer representative of God, than in all the com- 
bined splendours of revolving suns and systems. For 
of a spirit a spiritual being alone can be the true por- 
traiture. Matter can be moulded into the likeness of 
matter, mental and moral glory can be reflected and 
represented only by a mind. There may be something 
of God discoverable in " the light of setting suns, and 
the round ocean, and the living air, and the blue sky 
but a living, thinking, loving soul, has in it that which 
mute and material things, however noble, can never 
possess — a direct affinity with His own spiritual nature. 
Man alone, of all God's works in the universe, is made 
"in His own image, after His own likeness;" and 
therefore, if God would reveal Himself to us, the form 
under which the revelation can best be given is that of 
a human character and life. 

But in all ordinary specimens of humanity the 
medium has become sullied, dimmed, distorted, so that 
the heavenly light cannot shine through it, or, if at all, 
only brokenly and fitfully. Only once in its history 
has the world witnessed a perfect human nature", a 
flawless, stainless, unmarred soul. Only once has 
humanity formed a medium through which, in its 
unmingled brightness and beauty, the moral glory of 
God might pour its beams. In the profound yet un- 
conscious wisdom, in the serene purity, in the tender- 
ness, the forbearance, the persevering love, the combined 
magnanimity and lowliness of that faultless life of 
Jesus, we " behold, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord." 
As we ponder the record of His wondrous history who 



THE MANIFESTATION OF GOD. 



107 



shrank with, the recoil of Infinite Holiness from those 
unuttered thoughts of evil which only Omniscience 
could discover, the rnind is borne upwards to Him 
who, while He searches the hearts of the children of 
men, yet is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. As 
we follow in His mission of unwearied beneficence, that 
gentle, compassionate Being in whom sorrow ever found 
its best consoler, and penitence its pure, yet pitying 
friend ; as we note how, wherever He came, the cry of 
the wretched awaited him, — wherever He went, the 
blessings of them that were ready to perish followed 
His steps j how the hungry blessed Him for food, the 
homeless for shelter, the heavy-laden for rest ; how, 
one touch from His hand and the frozen blood of the 
leper flowed with the warm pulse of health, — one word 
from His lips, and the eyes of the blind gleamed back 
their gratitude upon Him ; how, too, far deeper ills 
than these — the pangs of conscious guilt, the woes of 
the troubled conscience, the incurable wound of re- 
morse, the inner maladies that oftenest baffle mortal 
skill, found ever in Him their most tender yet most 
potent healer ; and, finally, as we observe in the agent 
of all this wondrous working, a simplicity, a self-for- 
getfulness, a certain calm unobtrusiveness, that in His 
mightiest acts bespeaks no effort and courts no obser- 
vation or applause ; as we witness all this prodigality 
of goodness and majestic ease of power, does not the 
mind involuntarily ascend to that Being whose name 
is Almighty love, — does not the exclamation rise spon- 
taneously to the lip, " Surely God is here " ] 

There is yet one other aspect in which the manifesta- 



108 



SER3ION IV.— PART II. 



tion of God in Christ Jesus may be contemplated — viz., 
that which is presented by His sufferings and death. 

To our human conceptions, the noblest expression of 
love is that in which it assumes the form of suffering 
or self-sacrifice. Affection for an earthly friend is then 
most beautiful when it appears in the aspect of self- 
devotion, — of personal cost and endurance voluntarily 
borne on behalf of its object. Integrity, Piety, Eever- 
ence for truth and goodness, ever call forth our deepest 
veneration when they are seen withstanding the shock 
of calamity, unmoved by pain and hardship, and calmly 
submitting to every conceivable sacrifice, rather than 
that truth should be tampered with or rectitude in- 
fringed. In order, therefore, to our connecting with 
the character of God, this our grandest human ideal of 
love and holiness, it was necessary that there should 
be granted to us a manifestation of the Infinite Jehovah, 
in some such form as that we could conceive of Him as 
submitting to suffering, subjecting Himself to cost, 
undergoing sacrifice for the salvation of souls, and for 
the preservation inviolate of the honour of truth and 
righteousness. 

Now, nowhere else than in the sufferings and self- 
sacrifice of Him who was Deity Incarnate could such 
a manifestation be afforded ; — by no other act of divine 
beneficence could this expression of love in God be 
reached. For no mere gift of benignity can be con- 
ceived of as impoverishing a divine giver, or requiring 
a personal sacrifice on the part of One who has the 
resources of the universe at His disposal. The beauty 
and bounty which, with so lavish and unwearied 



THE MANIFESTATION OF GOD. 



109 



munificence, God has for ages been scattering over the 
face of creation, have not left Him the poorer — have 
not detracted one iota from His boundless wealth. The 
ceaseless stream of blessing leaves the inexhaustible 
fountain as capable of flowing still. The beams of 
beneficence poured from the everlasting sun diminish 
not its power to shine. The gift of a world were no 
sacrifice to Him who has but to speak, and worlds of 
rarer beauty and glory fall from His open hand. In 
creation and providence, in short, there is never con- 
veyed to the mind any sense of effort — any impression 
of expense or sacrifice on the part of the Infinite 
Creator. 

But it is different when we turn to the sacrifice of 
Christ. Viewed merely as the gift of God to man, in 
Christ Jesus we behold the Infinite Benefactor sur- 
rendering for our sake, from the treasury of His good- 
ness, that of which even He possessed no equivalent, 
and which by no stretch of Omnipotence could even 
He replace. God had but one Christ. Of this posses- 
sion of deity, none but itself could be its parallel. 
The noblest creation of God on earth is a soul, but all 
other souls are imperfect — God had in all the uni 
verse but one perfect soul, and that, with all its ines- 
timable wealth of thought and love and purity, He 
who alone knew its worth yielded up for us. There was 
but one noble vessel from the potter's hand that ever 
remained in its pure beauty, grace, and symmetry, un- 
marred, and that was cast for us to dishonour and ruin. 
There was but one spotless lamb in the flock, and that, 
the only one, the last, the best, was for us devoted to 



110 



SERMON 17.- PART II. 



destruction. The great Father had "but one Son, one 
gentle, holy, loving-hearted child, and Him for us He 
surrendered to ruffian and murderous hands. But in 
Jesus we behold more than a gift of Deity to man,— 
in Him we see Deity giving Itself for man. In the 
sacrifice of Christ there is that of which we are per- 
mitted to conceive as the sacrifice of one who was 
Himself divine, as the self-devotion of God for the 
salvation of His creatures. For the obliteration of 
a guilty past, and the opening up of a glorious future 
to the world, no meaner price would avail than the 
sacrifice of Deity Incarnate, and that price was paid. 
There was here, as we are permitted to think of this 
most wondrous event in the history of the universe, 
the abandoning of power by Omnipotence, the renun- 
ciation of authority by Him who rules the world, the 
stooping of the Author and Sustainer of life to weak- 
ness, pain, and death. In that eye that for us was 
tearless with anguish, there was— mysterious thought ! 
— the glance of Omniscience ; in that bosom which 
heaved with strange emotion, there was a woe that 
Deity could feel ; the wail of pitiless sorrow that broke 
from that awful sufferer's lips had in it the utterance 
of the very voice of God. Oh surely, if only by infinite 
sacrifice can infinite love be expressed, the dying Jesus 
is to us the sublime manifestation of the Invisible 
God! 



SERMON V. 



THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS. 
"I have trodden the wine-press alone."— Isaiah, lxiii. 3. 

There is always a certain degree of solitude about a 
great mind. Even a mere human being cannot rise 
pre-eminently above the level of bis fellow-men, with- 
out becoming conscious of a certain solitariness of 
spirit gathering round him. The loftiest intellectual 
elevation, indeed, is nowise inconsistent with a genial 
openness and simplicity of nature ; nor is there any- 
thing impossible or unexampled in the combination 
of a grasp of intellect that could cope with the lofti- 
est abstractions of philosophy, and a playfulness that 
could condescend to sport with a child. Yet whilst it 
is thus true that the possessor of a great mind may be 
capable of sympathising with, of entering kindly into 
the views and feelings, the joys and sorrows of inferior 
minds, it must at the same time be admitted that 
there is ever a range of thought and feeling into which 
they cannot enter with him. They may accompany 
him, so to speak, a certain height up the mountain, 



112 



SERMON V. 



but there is a point at which their feebler powers 
become exhausted ; and if he ascend beyond that, his 
path must be a solitary one. 

What is thus true of all great minds, must have been, 
beyond all others, characteristic of the mind of Him, 
who, with all His real and very humanity, could "think 
it no robbery to be equal with God." Jesus was indeed 
a lonely being in the world. With all the exquisite 
tenderness of His human sympathies, — touched with 
the feeling of our every sinless infirmity, — with a heart- 
that could feel for a peasant's sorrow, and an eye that 
could beam with tenderness on an infant's face, — He 
was yet one who, wherever He went, and by whomso- 
ever surrounded, was, in the secrecy of His inner being, 
profoundly alone. You who are parents, have, I dare- 
say, often felt struck by the reflection, what a world of 
thoughts, and cares, and anxieties are constantly pre- 
sent to your minds, into which your children cannot 
enter. You may be continually amongst them, hold- 
ing familiar intercourse with them, condescending to 
all their childish thoughts and feelings, entering into 
all their childish ways, — yet every day there are a thou- 
sand things passing through your mind, with respect, 
for instance, to your business or profession, your schemes 
and projects, your troubles, fears, hopes, and ambitions 
in life, your social connections, the incidents and events 
that are going on in the world around you, — there are 
a thousand reflections and feelings on such matters 
passing daily through your mind, of which your chil- 
dren know nothing. You never dream of talking to 
them on such subjects, and they could not understand 



TEE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS. 113 

or sympathise with, you if you did. There is a little 
world in which the play of their passions is strong and 
vivid, but beyond that their sympathies entirely fail. 
And perhaps there is no spectacle so exquisitely touch- 
ing as that which one sometimes witnesses in a house 
of mourning — the elder members of the family bowed 
down to the dust by some heavy sorrow, whilst the 
little children sport around in unconscious playfulness. 

The bearing of this illustration is obvious. What 
children are to the mature -minded man, the rest of 
mankind were to Jesus. Nay, such an illustration falls 
far short of conveying to us an adequate representation 
of the measureless inferiority of all other minds to that 
mighty, mysterious Spirit that dwelt in the bosom of 
Jesus. "He was in the world, and the world was 
made by Him, yet the world knew Him not." " The 
Light shone in^ darkness, and the darkness compre- 
hended it not." He was a Being born from a loftier 
sphere, and living on a grander scale than the other sons 
of men. He had nothing in common with the spirit 
of the times in which He lived. His views, principles, 
motives, associations, object of life, were not those of 
His own nation, nor of any land or clime on earth : they 
were drawn from the infinite, the eternal. Nothing 
can be clearer, from the simple narrative of the Gospels, 
than that to those among whom the earthly life of 
Jesus was spent He was an unintelligible being ; that 
they could not comprehend Him, however much they 
might be constrained to love Him. He moved among a 
narrow-minded, grovelling, sensual race, breathing a spirit 
of ineffable purity and holiness. Cast upon an age and 

H 



114 



SER310N V. 



among a people intensely selfish, in a state of society 
where the conflicting passions of hostile classes and races 
surrounded Him with an atmosphere of bigotry and con- 
tention, His mind was ever calmly revolving designs of 
universal benevolence, of self-sacrificing love to all man- 
kind. And whilst His whole life passed away, whilst 
every day, and almost every hour of it, was spent in in- 
tercourse with those whose minds never travelled beyond 
the petty circle of their own national prejudices and pas- 
sions, His inner being was yet ever filled with thoughts 
that wandered through eternity, that communed with in- 
visible intelligences, that mused upon the affairs and des- 
tinies of the universe. Oh, what depths were there in 
that mighty spirit which none around could fathom ! 
What ineffable joys and mysterious sorrows, unintelli- 
gible to the beings with whom He consorted as to the 
veriest children ! The seclusion of the wilderness could 
not have increased an isolation like His. He was soli- 
tary amid crowds. He " trod" the path of life " alone, 
and of the people there was none with Him.' 7 

The thought which I have now suggested to your 
minds, with reference to the entire life and earthly ex- 
perience of Jesus, I shall take occasion from the text 
to follow out a little further with reference to one par- 
ticular part of that experience — His sorroivs. 

The person who utters the words before us is com- 
monly understood to be none other than Messiah, of 
whose return in triumphant mien from the conquest 
of His enemies the context gives a glowing description. 
There passes before the eye of the prophet the vision 
of a glorious being, a solitary warrior, with blood-soiled 



THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST 'S SUFFERINGS. 115 

garments, and the flush of victory on His brow. And 
in answer to the inquiries of the dazzled and astonished 
spectator, He announces Himself as one who had stood 
forth in the defence of His people, who alone and single- 
handed had borne the fearful onset of their foes, and 
whose garments, besprinkled as from the treading of the 
wine-press, were dyed with blood of the slain. Now, 
without any more minute exposition of the passage, and 
indeed without vindicating too positively this applica- 
tion of it, I shall take occasion from the words of the 
text to lead your minds to one, as I think, most instruc- 
tive and suggestive view of the sufferings of our blessed 
Lord, — their solitariness. By this I mean not that they 
were solitary or peculiar as being propitiatory sufferings, 
though in this they were indeed distinguished from 
the sufferings of all other men. Nor do I mean merely 
that they were sufferings of extraordinary and unex- 
ampled severity, though that also is true. But the 
point to which I would confine your attention is this, 
that there were connected with the nature of this mys- 
terious sufferer certain features or conditions which 
rendered His sorrows such as no other of our race could 
endure, — certain facts which gave to them, as to His 
whole history, a character of elevation and awfulness, 
beyond the range of mere human experience. So that 
forasmuch as amid all the sons and daughters of sor- 
row that crowd the page of human history, Jesus yet 
stands forth " the Man of Sorrows," — the Solitary Suf- 
ferer of humanity \ passing through a strife which none 
but He might encounter, bearing in His lonely spirit 
the awful pressure of a sorrow which none of mortals 



116 



SERMON V. 



save Himself ever bore, He might indeed with emphasis 
proclaim, " I have trodden the wine-press alone." 

Following out, then, the view which I have now in- 
dicated, I shall endeavour to set before you one or two 
of those circumstances which rendered Jesus solitary 
in His sufferings. 

I. One of the most obvious of these is, that all his 
sorrows and sufferings were, long ere their actual oc- 
currence, clearly and fully foreseen. They were anti- 
cipated sorrows. Every calamity and affliction that 
awaited Him was disclosed to Him in all its certainty 
and severity from the very commencement of His 
history, and the terrible anticipation of approaching 
evil accompanied Him through His whole career on 
earth. This, obviously, is one feature of the mournful 
history of Jesus in which He stands alone — one con- 
dition of His earthly experience which must have lent 
a bitterness to His sorrows from which those of all 
other mortal sufferers are exempt. For need I remind 
you, what a great alleviation of the troubles and ills of 
life it is, that, in the great majority of cases, they are 
unforeseen. In the ordinary arrangements of Provi- 
dence a veil of obscurity hides from us the threatening 
aspect of approaching evil, so that the happiness of the 
passing hour is not damped, nor the severity of present 
sorrows increased, by the gloomy prospect of the future. 
Thus even the man on whom life's calamities and 
afflictions fall the thickest, is permitted to find in the 
very weakness and ignorance of our nature a refuge 
from its troubles ; for while memory is gradually re- 



THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST S SUFFERINGS. 117 

laxing its hold of past evils, hope is left free to people 
the future with all fancied good. May I not appeal 
for confirmation of this to your own experience 1 There 
are few or none now hearing nie who are not, in greater 
or less degree, acquainted with grief. Whether they 
came upon you in the form of personal sickness and 
pain, or of domestic trials and afflictions, or of sad and 
bitter bereavements, or of disappointments and reverses 
of worldly fortune, — in whatever shape they came, you 
have all, I doubt not, had your sorrows and troubles 
in life, and not one of you but, if you live much 
longer, will in all probability have many more to 
encounter yet. But I beseech you to consider how 
very much it would have added to the severity of any 
trial through which you have passed, if you could have 
fully and certainly foreseen it long before it came. 
Not to speak of the petty vexations and trials that are 
matters of daily experience, and the anticipation of 
which would steal away much of the sunshine of life, 
think what has been the greatest sorrow of your past 
existence. Perhaps there are not a few before me who 
can instantly lay the finger of memory on that spot, so 
black in the retrospect, where that dire bereavement, 
or that terrible and crushing blow of misfortune, fell 
suddenly upon them. Imagine, then, what it would 
have been to have been able, for long years and months 
before, to foresee its certain approach. With what 
heart could you have entered into that enterprise, so 
enthusiastically and perseveringly prosecuted, could 
you have anticipated the disastrous issue — the frustra- 
tion of your efforts, and disappointment of your fondest 



118 



SERMON V. 



hopes i Or when enjoying sweet intercourse with that 
much-loved friend, or looking forward, brimful of hope, 
to years of happiness in his society, what a stern inter- 
ruption of your happiness and your visions had it been, 
if the darkness had rolled away from the future of your 
life, and the hour been revealed close at hand when 
that loved one would be torn from your side ! And, 
need I add, to vivify this thought in your minds, that 
as with the past, so shall it be with the future experi- 
ence of us all. There are, I doubt not, more than one 
or two in this assembly, happy, light-hearted, tranquil, 
it may be, who, if they could but look into the secrets 
of one little year before them, would find their happi- 
ness sadly disturbed. Whom do you love most in this 
world 1 ? In whose society and intercourse are you 
taking most delight % Who is that friend, that brother 
or sister, or husband, or wife, or child, on whom your 
hopes and affections are chiefly centred, and from 
whom you would feel it would be agony to part? 
What if the irresistible conviction were forced upon 
your mind that, ere a few months have come and gone, 
that friend will be by your side no more, the anguish 
of separation will be gone through, and you will be left 
alone ? Or what if I could single out one, or another, 
or more, among this auditory, and convey to them, by- 
some mysterious yet irresistible means, the intelligence 
that on a certain day and month in the coming year 
they shall be hurried away from life by some painful 
and humiliating malady ? Alas ! with such a terrible 
prescience of evil resting on our souls, there would be 
fewer light hearts and happy homes amongst us to- 



TEE SOLITARINESS OF CHRISTS SUFFERINGS. 119 



night. Perhaps, these or similar events may actually 
be in reserve for some of us ; but " we know not 
what shall be on the morrow." God has mercifully 
hid from us the future ; and if such calamities await 
us, they do not disturb our present tranquillity, for 
they await us unknown. 

I have enlarged on this thought at what may appear 
too great a length, that I might bring out more fully 
one element of the sufferings of our blessed Lord, 
which is perhaps not so frequently dwelt upon as 
others. For, let me now ask you to reflect, that that 
ignorance of futurity which mercifully tempers the 
severity of all human ills, was an alleviation of sorrow 
unknown to Jesus. " I could never have gone through 
it," we often hear men exclaim, who have passed 
through protracted struggles or hardships — "I could 
never have gone through it, had I known the half of 
what lay before me." But, whatever were the hard- 
ships of His sorrowful life, whatever the mysterious, 
nameless agonies of His death, this unenviable fore- 
knowledge of them all belonged to Jesus. Even the 
smiles of infancy, may we not almost say, were dark- 
ened by the anticipated anguish of death, and in the 
very slumbers of the cradle He already in fancy hung 
upon the cross. This, at least, we do with certainty 
know, that, from the commencement of His public 
ministry, that hour and power of darkness, that cup of 
mingled woes from which at last it seemed as if His 
mighty spirit for a moment shrank, was clear and full 
before His eye. Words ever and anon dropped from His 
lips which showed how constantly this dread thought 



120 



SERMON V. 



was uppermost in His mind. Long ere it came, for 
instance, He told His disciples, in words they could but 
dimly comprehend, " I have a baptism to be baptised 
with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished J" 
When on the Mount of Transfiguration He enjoyed a 
brief respite from His toils, in communion with celestial 
visitants, what was the topic on which He chose to 
discourse with them? "They spake/' we are told, 
" of the decease which He was to accomplish at Jeru- 
salem." As the dreaded hour drew nearer, He took 
His disciples apart on the way to Jerusalem, as if more 
fully to unburden His oppressed spirit, and said, 
" Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man 
shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and scribes, 
and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver 
Him to the Gentiles, to mock, and to scourge, and to 
crucify Him." And at last, when the traitor came to 
take Him, we are told that " J esus, knowing all things 
that were to come upon Him, went forth." Thus, 
from the very dawn of His earthly ministry, Jesus 
looked forward to its dreadful close. Thick-strewn 
with sorrows as was every step of His onward path, 
His eye gazed on that which made Him almost uncon- 
scious of lesser ills — the awful gloom that hung over 
its termination ever deepening to the end. And when 
we think how this projected shadow of coming evil 
continually brooded over His soul, how by this awful 
foresight of futurity He was separated off from the 
common race of men, and how He, so gentle, so tender, 
so ready to sympathise with others, had thus upon His 
own soul a weight of woe which none might share, a 



THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRISTS SUFFERINGS. 121 



sorrow which none might soothe, — may we not hear, 
as if an echo of the cry of His agony, those mournful 
words, " I have trodden the wine-press alone " ? 

II. Another circumstance which distinguishes the 
sorrows of Jesus from those of all ordinary men, and 
which gives to this greatest of sufferers an aspect of 
solitariness in their endurance, is this, that they were 
the sorrows of an infinitely pure and perfect mind. 
No ordinary human being could ever suffer as Jesus 
did, for His soul was greater than all other souls ; and 
the mind that is of largest compass, or that is cast in 
the finest mould, is ever the most susceptible of suffer- 
ing. As it is the cup that is deepest that can be filled 
the fullest — as it is the tree that rears its head the 
highest that feels most the fury of the storm, so it is 
the soul that is largest and most exalted that is capable 
of the greatest sorrows. A little, narrow, selfish, un- 
cultured mind is liable to comparatively few troubles. 
The range alike of its joys and its sorrows is limited 
and contracted. It presents but a narrow target to 
the arrows of misfortune, and it escapes uninjured 
where a broader spirit would be "pierced through 
with many sorrows." The higher, indeed, any being 
rises in the scale of existence, the greater becomes the 
character and range of its pains, as well as its pleasures, 
its susceptibility of suffering, as well as of enjoyment. 
The insect, in the summer breeze, brimful of mere 
animal happiness, is exposed to mere animal privation 
and pain. Its life is but one long sensation. The 
little child again has fewer capacities of suffering, fewer 



122 



SERMON V. 



cares, and anxieties, and troubles, than the mature- 
minded man, — the savage, than the civilised being, — 
the ignorant, unrefined, unreflecting man, than the 
man of high intellectual and moral culture, of thought- 
fulness, and refinement of taste and feeling. In short, 
it is the great law of life that every advancing power, 
every improvement, physical, intellectual, moral, or 
spiritual, which a man gains, carries with it, as the 
necessary penalty, an additional liability, a new degree 
of exposure to surrounding evils. 

To see this more clearly, conceive a man of cultivated 
mind, of intellectual tastes and habits of thought, com- 
pelled to take up his abode among a household of 
coarse, frivolous, low-minded persons, — forced to spend 
his days among them, to listen to their empty or de- 
grading talk, and conform to their gross ways of life, — 
and would not the very culture and refinement his 
mind had received, render it more keenly susceptible 
of the miseries of such a position ; and the purer and 
more elevated his taste and sympathies, would not 
existence in such an atmosphere become all the more 
intolerable ? 

In the same way, imagine one of genial and affec- 
tionate nature, tender-hearted, and alive to the wants 
and sufferings of others, becoming the spectator of 
scenes of heartrending distress and wretchedness, or 
forced to witness the bodily sufferings or mental anguish 
of those who are very dear to him ; would not the pain 
experienced from such sights be all the more intense 
because of the gentleness and beneficence of the nature 
of him who beheld them ? Does not the nobleness of 



THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS. 123 



the patriot's or the philanthropist's nature assert itself 
in the very bitterness and oppression of spirit with 
which he contemplates the wrongs and the wretched- 
ness of his fellows ? Is it not the unenviable com- 
pensation for the curse of a cold, hard heart, that its 
possessor can walk unmoved amidst scenes of severest 
sorrow, or behold with unfeeling composure sufferings 
at which other hearts are bleeding ? 

Or, once more, turn your thoughts to one who has 
begun to receive that highest of all culture, whose 
soul is undergoing that noblest of all developments, 
the renewing influence of Divine grace, — and is it not 
so that he too by reason of that spiritualising of his 
inner being — that change which has expanded his 
intellect, and chastened his affections, and opened up 
to him a new range of exalted and ineffable enjoyments, 
— is it not so that he too becomes susceptible, in such 
a world as this, of pains and sorrows unfelt before 1 
The blind know not the pains of sight, nor the deaf of 
sound, nor the dead and insensible, of living and breath- 
ing men. And so the quickening touch of God's Spirit 
wakes the believer's soul from a state of moral insensi- 
bility and death, to one in which the inner eye can be 
pained by deformities, and the ear by discords, and the 
spiritual nature by sicknesses and troubles, of which 
hitherto it had been all unconscious. He knew nothing 
before, in his unconverted state, of the joy and peace 
of believing, the deep, tranquil happiness of a soul 
that is at one with God, and that reposes on the sense 
of its Maker's love ; but as little did he know of that 
deeper sorrow that gathers over the believer's soul in 



124 



SERMON V. 



times of failing and spiritual desertion, when the light 
of God's countenance is hid from him, and he sinks 
under the sense of his heavenly Father's frown. In 
the days that are past, he was incapable of that new 
and exquisite relish for all that is true, and pure, and 
good, for all things that are lovely and lovable, which 
has risen within his soul ; but this very relish for what 
is good has brought with it a more sensitive shrinking 
from sin in every form, has rendered conscience more 
tender, and the least appearance of evil the cause of 
deepest and most painful self-condemnation. What 
self-loathing and prostration of spirit does one who has 
advanced far in the divine life experience when betrayed 
into sins, that to a careless mind would not cost a thought? 
Finally, there has arisen in the believer's mind a new 
delight in the progress of truth and goodness, a hither- 
to unexperienced longing for the success of Christ's 
cause on earth ; but at the same time, and as the coun- 
terpart of this feeling, he becomes conscious of a degree 
of pain and sorrow heretofore unknown at the sight 
of the prevailing ungodliness and wickedness of men. 
He can sympathise now as he could not before in the 
lamentation, " Rivers of waters run down mine eyes 
because they keep not thy law." And the more he 
grows in holiness, in devotion to the will of God, and 
in appreciation of the importance of eternal things, so 
much the more will he be grieved and disquieted by the 
sins of those around him. "What anguish does a Chris- 
tian parent feel at the exhibitions of thoughtlessness 
and irreligion in the conduct of his children, or a Chris- 
tian friend when he beholds those who are dear to him 



THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS. J25 



living in open neglect of God, and in utter indifference 
to the grandest interests of life ! And all these again, 
we say, are causes of disquietude, of which an unre- 
newed mind knows nothing. They are sorrows that 
assert the greatness of the soul that feels them. They 
are the pangs and strugglings of a nature that is becom- 
ing too noble for the world to which it is confined, and 
which show, in proportion to their intensity, the gran- 
deur of the destiny that awaits it. 

But now if all this be so, — if the principle I have 
now endeavoured to illustrate, do indeed hold good, 
that the nearer a soul approaches to perfection, the 
more sensitive does it become to the evils, pains, sor- 
rows, sins, that surround it in such a world as this, — 
surely, enough has been said to show how far beyond 
all human experience, how far even beyond all human 
comprehension, must have been the sufferings of the 
soul of Jesus. His was indeed the gentlest, noblest, 
purest spirit that ever dwelt in human breast ; it had 
therefore a capability of suffering, a cognisance of sur- 
rounding evils, an exquisitely- strung susceptibility to 
sorrow, such as soul of man besides never felt. His 
soul's delight was in holiness ; it recoiled with deep and 
instinctive abhorrence from sin : upon the pure, bur- 
nished mirror, so to speak, of that spotless nature, the 
slightest breath of outward impurity would have ga- 
thered dimness. "What, then, must it have been for 
Him to live in such a world as this— to be exposed for 
thirty years to the foul atmosphere of its ungodliness and 
evil 1 — His soul's delight was in happiness. The most 
tender-hearted spirit of human philanthropy, the most 



126 



SERMON V. 



generous benefactor of his species, never felt such a 
shrinking from the sight of the woes and sufferings of 
mankind as Jesus did. What, then, must it have been 
for that gentlest, tenderest, most loving-hearted Saviour, 
to walk through such a world of wretchedness as this, 
— to take in with His omniscient, world-wide glance, 
the tears, and griefs, and pains, and struggles, and sick- 
nesses, and deaths, with which his Father's once-happy 
world was rife, — to hear, as it were, the great forlorn 
wail of humanity borne to his ear upon the four winds 
of heaven ! — His soul's delight, once more, was in His 
Father's love. Never human heart was capable of lov- 
ing, was large enough to love, with such a love as His. 
The infant clings not to the mother's breast with such 
confiding joy as His when reposing that mighty spirit 
upon the bosom of Infinite Love. The radiant earth 
opens not in beauty and gladness beneath the gleam- 
ing sun, as did His rejoicing spirit in the sunshine of 
Jehovah's love. That love cheered Him in languor, 
sustained Him in weariness, soothed Him in sorrow, 
nerved Him in the thought of pain, and shame, and 
agony, and death. What, then, must it have been to 
Jesus to feel, even for a moment, the sense of that love 
withdrawn — to undergo, through human pain and weak- 
ness, an impression as if of that countenance darkening 
over Him whose light had been the very life of His 
being from all eternity ! Conceive of the sun struck 
out of yonder heavens, and the world suddenly over- 
whelmed with the horror of perpetual darkness and 
cold. Imagine the sustaining providence of God with- 
drawn from the universe, and everything hurrying to 



THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS. 127 

desolation and ruin. But no emblem, no comparison 
can convey to us but the faintest conception of what it 
was for God's dear Son, as if God-deserted, to die. 

III. But the feelings of Jesus in contemplating the 
sin and wretchedness of humanity, the mournful pre- 
valence of evil in the world, were not those merely of 
a most holy and tender-hearted human being : let me 
add as one other consideration tending to show how 
very peculiar a sorrow was His, how very solitary Jesus 
must have been in His sorrow, that it was — the sorrow 
of a Creator amid His ruined uiorks. 

The feelings of Jesus, I have said, in beholding, and 
living amidst, the moral ruin and degradation of man- 
kind, were not those merely of an exquisitely pure and 
sensitive human spirit : they flowed from a far deeper 
and more awful source. It was not merely the gentle- 
hearted and pitying Man of Nazareth that trod our 
fallen world ; it was nothing less than the world's 
great Creator that, concealed in that humble guise, 
surveyed and moved for thirty years amidst the ruins 
of His fairest, noblest work, lying widespread around 
Him ! For, though this indeed is a thought into 
which our imperfect minds can but faintly and inade- 
quately enter, are we not borne out by Scripture 
authority in the affirmation, that grief for the moral 
ruin of humanity is an emotion to which the Divine 
mind is not a stranger? You all remember that re- 
markable passage in the Book of Genesis, in which the 
mind of God is represented as filled with sorrow and 
indignation at the sad issue of His great creating work 



128 



SERMON V. 



— "When God saw that the wickedness of man was 
great upon the earth, and that the imagination of the 
thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, it 
repented God that He had made man upon the earth, 
and it grieved Him at His heart" And not to name 
other passages of a similar import, I would only remind 
you further of that mysterious grief of Him who was 
God manifest in the flesh, which, at the threshold of 
His own last sufferings, made Him almost lose sight of 
their approaching anguish in His grief for the moral 
blindness and hardness of His people. l( When Jesus 
was come near the city," it is written, " he wept over 
it, saying, Oh that thou hadst known, even thou, in 
this thy day, the things that belong to thy peace, but 
now they are hid from thine eyes ! " On the authority 
of the word of God, then, as well as from the reason 
of the thing, we hazard the assertion, that one awful 
ingredient in the sufferings of that mysterious mourner 
must have been grief for the desolation of His grandest 
work — the anguish of spirit with which for thirty years 
He beheld everywhere confronting Him the proofs that 
the soul of man was a ruin. 

There is a sort of sentimental melancholy which 
gathers over the mind of one who surveys the scene 
of some great nation's bygone glory, now, it may be, 
strewn only with wreck of departed greatness. When 
the traveller visits those countries with which from 
childhood his mind has been accustomed to associate 
everything that is noble and elevated in humanity ; 
when he surveys around him the indications of former 
majesty and power, now long past away, or inspects 



TEE SOLITARINESS OF CERISTS SUFFERINGS. 129 

those exquisite remains on which, human genius and 
art had lavished all their splendour, now rudely marred 
and defaced, and hastening to inevitable decay, — there 
is a certain pensive sadness which not unnaturally 
passes over the mind, and to which many have given 
expression. But surely an emotion of a far deeper 
kind may well be called forth in the thoughtful mind 
when contemplating the mournful moral and spiritual 
degradation of humanity, as contrasted with the glory 
of its original structure, and the splendours of that 
destiny for which it was created ? What are the most 
exquisite productions of human thought and toil com- 
pared with that work on which, even in its ruins, the 
impress of Omnipotence may be traced ] What is the 
destruction of the noblest fabrics reared by human 
hand, in comparison with the dishonour and desecra- 
tion of the temple of the Holy Ghost ? What are the 
overshadowing of all earthly greatness, and the extinc- 
tion of all material glory, in contrast with the spiritual 
and eternal ruin of the soul of man 1 Even the body, 
the mere tabernacle in which the soul resides — even 
the human body, that fabric so curiously and wonder- 
fully wrought by the hand of God, so marred and dis- 
honoured by the effects of sin — even that, a work which 
only Deity could create, is a work over whose ruin even 
Deity might mourn. Yet every sickbed by which Jesus 
stood, and every sufferer's cry He heard, and every bier 
and grave to which His steps were led, were to His eye 
the ruthless destruction of another and another glori- 
ous work of God — the proofs of the triumph of the 
destroyer over the results of infinite wisdom and skill, 
i 



130 



SERMON V. 



But the destruction of the body is insignificant in 
comparison with the ruin of the soul. The former is 
but the dissolution of a thing of material elements, the 
latter is the deforming and corrupting of a thing made 
in the image of God, partaker of a divine nature, and 
destined for His service and glory for ever. The former 
is but the breaking up of insensate matter, the latter is 
the reducing to impurity and wretchedness of a thing 
that shall survive in the consciousness of its misery 
when the material universe shall have passed away. 

Shall we wonder, then, that the Creator of such a 
work as this — so noble, so deathless, so divine — should 
have experienced bitter grief for its ruin ? When J esus 
walked our world, His eye, we may well believe, was 
not arrested by the bustle and importance of its out- 
ward scenes and interests. Prom all mere external 
things His observation was ever diverted to what from 
all other eyes was hidden, the awful mystery and moral 
deformity of the secret world of souls. Could a human 
being for a single week be invested with a mysterious 
power of seeing into the hearts of those around him, 
and detecting all the feelings and motives that are 
working beneath the breasts of his fellow-men, doubt- 
less, even to man's imperfect moral sensibility, the 
disclosures thus made would be too horrible for endur- 
ance, and the fatal power of inspection would be gladly 
resigned. But that which would be intolerable even 
to a fallen and imperfect being, was a spectacle from 
which the eye of the pure and holy Jesus could never 
for a moment escape. All hearts were unveiled to 
Him. He surveyed not merely the forms and counte- 



THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS. 131 

nances of human beings : a thousand indications tell 
us that He " knew what was in man," — that He read 
their souls. And everywhere as He looked He saw 
that soul that had sprung a pure, holy, happy thing 
from His hands, now filled with selfishness and pride 
and envy and impurity and all ungodliness ; — that soul 
that had been destined for the companionship of God 
and angels, now ripening for the blackness of darkness 
for ever ! And can we doubt that His was an anguish 
at the sight into which no finite mind can enter 1 He 
could feel for external sufferings. He looked up to 
heaven and sighed for the deaf. He wept, and groaned 
in spirit for the dead. But what were external suffering 
and death to this ? To Him the world was strewn with 
a more awful than material desolation — with the wreck 
of spiritual grandeur, the memorials of lost and ruined 
souls. " 0 my Father," we almost hear Him exclaim, 
<c is this the world over which the morning stars sang 
together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy !" 

Many reflections of a practical kind might be sug- 
gested from the train of thought in which we have 
now been engaged. All such views of the sufferings of 
Jesus are, for instance, most obviously suggestive of gra- 
titude for His marvellous self-devotion on our behalf 
For the views that have been presented to us — of the 
mysterious foresight and of the ineffable dignity, bene- 
ficence, and holiness of this greatest of sufferers — ought 
surely to convey to our minds a most vivid impression 
of the intensity of that love He bore for us. The gran- 
deur of the sufferer enhances the value of the sufferings. 



132 



SERMON V. 



The height from which Jesus stooped, the moral glory 
of His nature, the exquisite purity and serenity of that 
atmosphere in which He had been accustomed to breathe, 
render it all the more astonishing that he should sub- 
mit to descend so low, and so Long for our sakes to 
dwell in the foul region of this world's ungodliness and 
evil. The most delicate and sensitive being trained 
from infancy in a home of purity and love, sheltered 
from the very breath of pollution, and then forced to 
live in some haunt of iniquity, and among the shame- 
less and abandoned victims of profligacy, would not 
undergo the transition with such shrinking abhorrence 
as did Jesus that transition which He voluntarily under- 
went for us. An angel from the throne of God submit- 
ting to dwell amid the blasphemies and waitings of hell 
would not exhibit a spectacle of voluntary humiliation 
such as His, who stooped from infinitude to such a 
world as this. 0, believer, what a love was that which 
braved and endured such humiliation ; which bore thy 
Saviour onwards through such degradation for thee ! 

And let it vivify this feeling of gratitude still more 
to reflect on the view that has been before us of the an- 
ticipative character of all His sufferings. The love of 
Jesus for His people was no transient feeling. The 
sufferings and sacrifices He endured were not the effect 
of some passing impulse of affection. They were not 
the actions of one who has committed himself to an 
undertaking without well weighing or knowing the con- 
sequences, and who cannot afterwards draw back. He 
knew before all that His love for you was to cost Him. 
In His coolest and calmest moments, if we may so 



TEE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS. 133 

speak, His view of all the horrors of the future were as 
clear as when on the very point of encountering them \ 
and His resolution was as firm and deliberate as His 
knowledge was complete. Human heroism has per- 
formed deeds of daring valour in the heat and high ex- 
citement of the conflict, from which, had they been 
foreseen in calmer hours, it would have shrunk dismayed. 
The voyager will tempt the sea when its waves are calm, 
and its aspect smiling : could he anticipate the terrors of 
the storm and the shipwreck, nothing would induce him 
to embark. But the Lord Jesus, the Lamb slain from 
the foundation of the world, had before His prescient 
gaze, amidst the heights of glory, all the darkness of 
that sea of sorrows through which He must pass, as 
clearly as when the waters went over his soul : yet was 
" His love stronger than death — many waters could not 
quench it." The Lord Jesus foresaw the fearfulness of 
that last conflict as fully when in His Father's presence 
He said, " Here am I — -send me ; " " Lo, I come to do 
Thy will, 0 God as when, in the very article of His 
agony, confronting the banded powers of earth and hell, 
"He trode the wine-press alone." "Who shall separ- 
ate us " from such a love as this % 

Again, is not this subject fraught ivith a most solemn 
warning to all ivho are living in carelessness or indiffer- 
ence to the spiritual interests of themselves and others? 
What more awful intimation could be conveyed to us 
of the evil of sin, and of the infatuation of those who 
are indifferent to its fatal consequences, than in the 
grief and sorrow of Jesus? If you are conscious of 
little or no anxiety about the soul and its eternal inter- 



134 



SERMON V. 



ests, consider that you are unconcerned about that which 
filled the omniscient Saviour with dismay and darkness 
of spirit. When the veteran in war grows pale at the 
sight of approaching danger, the inexperienced soldier 
may well tremble. When the skilful physician looks 
alarmed at the aspect of the disease, it would ill become 
the sick man to treat the symptoms with contempt. 
And when even an omniscient being is overwhelmed 
with sadness at the contemplation of sin, shall those on 
whom its fatal consequences must fall remain calm and 
unaffected ? Constantly surrounded by the atmosphere 
of moral evil, we cannot form a right estimate of its 
pollution : but Jesus came amongst us from the free 
bright air of heaven, — from a region, and with a soul 
habituated to breathe in an element of salubrity and 
purity. And shall it not convey to us a vivid impres- 
sion of the foulness of our spiritual state, when we be- 
hold Him shrinking with pain and abhorrence from its 
contact *? We cannot see, or estimate adequately, the 
future results of sin ; but this was One who could lift 
the veil and gaze upon the mysterious secrecies of eter- 
nity. We cannot follow the departing sinner in the 
hour of death, or form the faintest estimate of the con- 
sequences of that awful transition ; but here was a Being 
who could look beyond the brink of life, who could not 
only see in all its inherent repulsiveness the guilt of the 
sinner in this w r orld, but who, with that eye before which 
even " hell is naked, and destruction hath no covering," 
could gaze upon the tremendous realities that await the 
sinner in the world to come. And when we conceive 
Him surveying, on the one hand, the multitudes of giddy, 



THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRISTS SUFFERINGS. 135 



thoughtless, infatuated beings around Him, engrossed 
with, the affairs of the passing hour, trifling with the 
grandest concerns in the universe, — gay, sportive, care- 
less, hurrying on to the verge of life ; and then, on the 
other hand, turning to behold the dread futurity, the 
awful gulf of ruin flaming forth the hot wrath of the 
Almighty God against the impenitent,— is there not in 
this an explanation, that may well appal the sinner, of 
the compassion, the grief, the yearning expostulations 
of Jesus 1 It was an awful testimony to the grandeur 
of the event that was taking place when, at the death 
of Jesus, the sun in heaven was darkened, and the 
solid earth beneath was rent ; but surely it testifies to 
a still more terrible catastrophe, when the face, not of 
the sun, but the sun's Creator, is overshadowed, — 
when, not the material earth is moved, but the spirit 
of Him who made it is rent with anguish. Oh, believe 
me, it is impossible for imagination to conceive a more 
awful measure of the guilt and danger of sin than the 
grief of Jesus. 

But I would suggest, as a final reflection, that such 
views of the sufferings of J esus afford to every penitent 
soul the strongest encouragement to rely on the Saviour's 
love. For, to name but one of several ways in which 
this inference presents itself, have we not seen that all 
the sufferings of Jesus were anticipated sufferings, and 
that He contemplated from the very beginning all the 
tremendous hardships of the enterprise in which He 
was to engage? Your salvation, then, was an object 
which even at such a fearful cost He was willing to 
seek j and think you He is less willing to seek it now 



136 



SERMON V. 



— now when all hardships and sorrows are over, and 
the price of your redemption has been fully paid? 
Undeterred by anticipated sorrows, undismayed by 
evils from which every other being in the universe 
would have shrunk, He gave Himself to win the prize 
of life eternal for you, — will He, think you, withhold, 
or be reluctant to bestow that prize upon you now that 
His pains and toils are ended, now that He has only 
to speak the word, and it is yours ? The salvation of 
your soul was an end so glorious, that He was willing 
to reach it though the way to it led through blood, 
and darkness, and death, — can you entertain any 
doubt that He is willing to secure it now, when 
nothing intervenes, when every difficulty has been 
overcome, when He has but to stretch out the hand 
of mercy, and the consummation of all His sufferings 
is attained ? 

Is there any anxious soul now present, bowed down, 
it may be, under the sense of its own guilt and hard- 
ness and insensibility, so as to be unable to take com- 
fort from the message of mercy 1 Behold in this your 
strong consolation ! Whatever you are, however de- 
plorable your past guilt, your present coldness and 
hardness of heart, these did not deter Christ from un- 
dertaking all His anticipated sufferings for you,- — why 
should they deter Him from saving you, now that His 
sufferings are ended for ever? Guilty, impenitent, 
ungodly though you are, to save you, and such as you, 
He was willing to endure the awful hiding of His 
Father's face, — shall He be thought less willing to save 
you now, when, for every redeemed soul, He anticipates 



THE SOLITARINESS OF CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS. 137 

that face irradiated with the smile of infinite and divine 
complacency ] He sought your salvation, when to gain 
it He needed to be impoverished — "to be made poor 
that you might be rich/' — can He be reluctant to secure 
it now, when every soul that is saved is another jewel 
added to His mediatorial crown, — another trophy of 
His glorious victory, — a new "portion of the spoil 
divided " to Him, — an accession, if that were possible, 
to the very wealth of heaven ? 

Away, then, with all such dishonouring doubts and 
difficulties ! Shall the husbandman, for the sake of the 
harvest, waste his strength, and bear the burden and 
heat of the day, and then, when the ripe corn tempts 
the sickle, in very wantonness refuse to reap, and let 
it be destroyed ? Shall the Lord Jesus undertake to 
suffer for us, — shall He actually toil, and groan, and 
grieve, and die for us, — and then let the fruit of all 
His sufferings be lost, and leave us to perish in our 
sins ? "No, it cannot be. It is impossible to exaggerate 
the certainty and freeness of that salvation that is in 
Christ for all who will but lay hold of it. It is impos- 
sible that anything in the universe can lie between you 
and eternal life, if you but accept it as the " gift of God 
through Jesus Christ our Lord." 



SERMON VI. 



PARTICIPATION IN THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. 

" Rejoice inasmuch as ye are partakers of the sufferings of Christ."— 
1 Peter, iv. 13. 

It is strange what a power there is in suffering to unite 
in deepest intimacy those who have nobly borne it 
together. No bond of union so close as the bond of 
common sorrows ; no brotherhood so deep and true as 
the brotherhood of calamity and misfortune. It would 
seem as if the affections could never be welded so firmly 
as when they have been exposed to the fiery solvent of 
adversity. Perhaps it is that we never so truly under- 
stand each other as when great and common trials sound 
the depths of our nature, and show to each what is in 
a brother's heart. Or it may be that love is strength- 
ened most of all by the trials and hardships endured 
for the sake of its object. Eut whatever be the ex- 
planation, there is, we know, a subtle influence in pain 
and sorrow to knit fellow-sufferers, heart to heart and 
soul to soul, as no participation in joy and pleasure can 
ever unite them. The survivors of the wreck who can 
recall the days and hours of danger and exposure, of 



PARTICIPATION IN THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. 139 

alternating hope and despair, which they bore together ; 
the remnant of the forlorn hope, who have stood side 
by side while shot and shell were raining death around 
them ; or the few brave and true hearts who together 
have struggled through the protracted and terrible 
siege, and whose friendship is cemented by a thousand 
associations of sympathy and endurance, — cannot choose 
but feel in each other a deeper than common interest. 
Or if we seek an illustration from the quieter scenes 
of life, it is probable that the domestic affections never 
grow so deep and firm as when the inmates of a home 
have struggled on together through years of poverty 
and hardship, and can recall, perhaps, in more prosper- 
ous days, a long eventful history of common toils and 
sorrows. 

[Now, some such thought as this may have been pre- 
sent to the apostle's mind when he congratulated his 
suffering fellow- Christians on the fact that they were 
partakers of the sufferings of Christ. Fierce as was 
" the fiery trial which tried them, 7 ' it had this blessed 
consolation, that it brought the sufferers closer to the 
heart, into more perfect sympathy with the spirit of a 
suffering Lord. The secret depths of that sorrowing 
heart they could better understand in virtue of the 
approximation to His grief which their own hearts had 
felt, and a fuller appreciation of His ineffable love 
could be theirs, when by experience they had learnt 
something of that penalty of suffering and sacrifice 
which for them He so willingly had paid. Kindred by 
the holy tie of sorrow, they became thus, as it were, 
more nearly related to " the man of sorrows, and ac- 



140 



SERMON VI. 



quainted with grief/' Instead, therefore, of regarding 
it as a " strange thing " that theirs should be a lot of 
suffering and trial, it would rather have seemed un- 
natural had it been otherwise. Strange it would have 
been had the servants' cup been all sweetness, when 
the Master's was one of unmingled bitterness — had 
they moved over a soft and easy path, while He toiled 
along a road every step of which was agony. Nay, 
rather, drinking the same cup, would they mingle their 
tears with His ; and over that path, hard and rugged 
and thorny though it was, would they wish to tread, 
where the print of His bleeding feet could be discerned 
before them. And therefore, in one word, did they, 
because of the deeper sympathy, the more intimate 
nearness to Jesus which sorrow bestows, rejoice in 
their participation of His sufferings. 

But it is not all kinds of suffering in which we have 
community with Jesus. There are sorrows, obviously, 
of which the infinitely pure and holy Saviour could 
have no experience, and in the endurance of which no 
man can appropriate the consolation of fellowship with 
Christ. It might seem, indeed, at first sight, as if all 
sorrow endured by imperfect and guilty beings lay 
beyond the cognisance and sympathy of Jesus ; for into 
the bitterness of such sorrow sin enters, more or less, 
as an ingredient. Yet in the chapter preceding that 
from which the text is taken, the apostle speaks of 
Christ as "suffering for sin," and comforts the perse- 
cuted and sorrowing Christians by the thought that to 
this very suffering of Christ their sufferings were in 
some sort analogous. " It is better/' he writes, "that 



PARTICIPATION IN THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. 141 

ye suffer in well-doing than in evil-doing ; for Christ 
also hath once suffered for sins." It is not, of course, 
to be understood that Christians can, in the full sense 
of the words, " suffer for sin " as Jesus did. Neverthe- 
less, there is that in all noble and Christian suffering 
which assimilates the believer to his suffering Lord, 
and qualifies him to "enter into the fellowship" of 
Christ's suffering for sin. Let us endeavour, therefore, 
to find out what sort of suffering for sin is possible to 
a pure and holy nature. How far may suffering for 
sin be really noble and worthy ? What elements must 
we eliminate from suffering caused by sin in forming 
our ideal of suffering purity ? It is this question to 
which, with special reference to the sufferings of 
Christ, I shall now direct your thoughts ; and I shall 
do so by considering first, negatively, what Christ 
could not, and then positively, what He must, as a 
perfectly pure and holy Being, have " suffered for sins." 

1. One element of suffering for sin, and that a most 
bitter one, of which Christ could have no direct ex- 
perience, is conscious guilt Wide as the range of its 
sympathies with the sinful, there is a line beyond 
which a nature which is itself sinless can never pass. 
Large - hearted, genial, all - embracing in its charities, 
the pure spirit of Jesus could yet never go with fallen 
humanity in its sorrows one step beyond that limit 
where loathing of sin passes into remorse: Into that 
dismal region, overshadowed by the gloom of guilt, and 
where rage the furies of an avenging conscience, He 
who was " in all points tempted like as we are, yet 
without sin," could never follow us. With whatever 



142 



SERMON VI. 



intuitive certainty He read the secrets of human 
hearts, with whatever yearning compassionateness He 
blended His soul with their sorrows, there were depths 
of guilty woe which that noble innocence could never 
sound. Self-loathing, the loss of self-respect, the sense 
of personal demerit, the self-disgust of satiated passion, 
the miserable weariness of a heart in which the capacity 
but not the desire of impure delight has burned out,— 
these are the feelings that constitute the most terrible 
ingredient of the sinner's agony, the most intolerable 
woes which human heart can feel; and yet these, it is 
obvious, could never cast their faintest shadow on the 
heart of the Sinless One. As there is a guilty rapture, 
so there is a guilty dismay, from all personal experience 
of which He is, of necessity, excluded. As it were 
blasphemy to ascribe to Him the joys of gratified 
ambition, the dark delights of satiated vengeance, or 
glutted avarice, or envy glorying in a rival's, or hatred 
in a foe's discomfiture, — so equally impious were it to 
attribute to Jesus the sorrows of wounded pride, or 
disappointed lust or ambition, the rankling wounds of 
envy or jealousy, or the unavailing agonies of despair. 
"Whosoever of mortals is in pain, or loneliness, or 
bereavement, or grief, on the great Consoler he can 
lean with entirest confidence of sympathy ; but who- 
soever, yielding up his soul to sin, is visited by sin's 
bitter fruit of guilty sorrow, excludes himself from 
holy sympathy, averts from him the tenderest, noblest, 
of mortal hearts, casts off the supporting arm of 
Jesus, and must suffer alone. With all godly sorrow 
Jesus sympathises, but He knows nothing, and never 



PARTICIPATION IN THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. 143 

can, "t)f the sorrow of the world that worketh 
death." 

2. Another element in suffering for sin, of which a 
perfectly holy nature could have no experience, is a 
personal sense of divine wrath, Conscious guilt, indeed, 
is but the inward reflection of divine wrath, the 
shadow of the darkened brow of God cast upon the 
spirit of man, and the soul that is incapable of the 
former must be equally exempted from the experience 
of the latter. Even in this world, dim as are our per- 
ceptions of spiritual realities, the latent thought of 
God's anger — of a personal Majesty of the heavens 
whom he has incensed, an Infinitely Just and Holy 
One, whose dread indignation he has incurred — is one 
terrible ingredient in a wicked man's wretchedness. 
And how much more terrible this element of suffering 
in that world where spiritual things are seen and felt 
in their real magnitude. Before even a fellow man's 
indignation the guilty spirit sometimes cowers in terror. 
It is dreadful for detected impurity to meet the eye 
of a revered parent or friend, with all the shame of 
discovered sin fresh upon it. The craven heart of sin 
shrinks from the presence of even earthly goodness, 
and will sometimes seek the suicide's refuge rather than 
encounter man's contempt and indignation. But man's 
anger, the indignation against sin of earthly goodness, 
is but the imperfect reflection of God's. Who can tell 
what it is to go forth into a drear eternity, to meet the 
awful front of incensed Justice — to stand a guilty thing 
surprised, in shivering nakedness and shame, before the 
flashing eye of God ! But this obviously is a sorrow 



144 



SERMON VI. 



altogether alien to Christ's experience, a woe which 
God's dear Son could never feel. God could never dis- 
like or be displeased with Christ, nor was it possible for 
that Divine Innocence to experience for a moment the 
terrible feeling of guilt cowering beneath God's anger. 
There is a sense, doubtless, in which it' may be averred 
of Christ, that for His redeemed, and by mysterious 
implication of His being with theirs, He bore God's 
wrath \ yet must we ever exclude from our minds any 
notion implying that Christ could think of God as 
indignant at Him. There was no wrath going forth 
against Him in those dreadful scenes amidst which a. 
world's iniquities were pressing most heavily upon 
Him, — nay, rather, it was then, in the very midst of 
His agony for sin, that God approved of Him the most. 
Behind the gloom of the cross the radiant smile of 
divine complacency was beaming brightest. And Jesus 
knew and felt that it was. He passed to His sufferings 
with expressions of tenderest reliance, of yearning con- 
fidence in the Father's love ; in the very article of His 
agony He felt and said that He was doing that which 
was the Father's will ; and on the cross, though human 
pain and weakness seem for a moment to have beclouded 
His spirit with a sense of forsakenness, yet even then 
His words breathed unwavering confidence in God's 
love and favour — the yearning, clinging, confiding 
tenderness of a heart that knows itself to be loved, 
and incapable of being deserted. " My God ! My 
God ! " was still His cry ; and His passing spirit He 
breathed away into the Father's arms, with indestruc- 
tible consciousness of a divine love and care embracing 



PARTICIPATION IN TEE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. 145 

Him — " Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit ! " 
No ! beneath all the outer perturbation of His history 
there was a deep abiding peace — the peace of innocence, 
the imperturbable quiet of conscious purity resting in 
the everlasting arms. Betwixt the experience of a 
guilty soul writhing under the frown of God, and His, 
even in His darkest hour of sorrow, there is an im- 
passable gulf. 

3. JSTor, finally, though Christ " tasted of death for 
every man," could He ever experience personally that 
which constitutes to the sinner the very bitterness of 
death — the fear of what comes after death. If death 
were a mere sleep, a sinking into unconsciousness, its 
aspect to the guilty would be deprived of half its 
terror. The mere pain of dying is often far less than 
the pain of living. But it is because sin projects the 
shadow of its own fear into the future, because guilty 
deeds have sent on witnesses to wait him beyond the 
grave, that the wicked man dreads to die. Take away 
all fear of what comes after death, and most men would 
meet it calmly; but it is the thought that they go, 
they know not whither, into a world all strange, por- 
tentous, unknown ; it is the mystery, the gloom, the 
uncertainty, the dim and dismal prevision of evil, all 
the more alarming that it is indistinct — it is this that 
makes death terrible. But into the dying sorrow of 
the sinner's Substitute this element of suffering could 
not enter. The dying hour of Jesus was disturbed by 
no fear of what awaited Him beyond the grave. There 
was to Him no brooding doubt, no uncertainty, no 
alarm hanging over the unseen world. He was not 

K 



146 



SERMON VI. 



torn by the relentless hand from a world to which He 
clung, to one from which His trembling soul turned 
away — driven, struggling, shuddering, reluctant, over 
the brink of life into darkness and despair. On the 
contrary, death to J esus was an escape from protracted 
banishment to endless and unutterable union with His 
Father. It was the passing from a world in which all 
had been to Him toil and weariness and woe, to one on 
which the sweet memories of an eternity of joy were 
resting. Death to Jesus, in one word, was but a going 
home. "If ye loved Me," were His parting words, 
" ye would rejoice because I go to my Father." " I 
go to my Father and your Father, to my God and 
your God." " To-day," was His promise to the com- 
panion of His agony, while a dawning heaven was 
breaking on His death-dimmed eye — "To-day shalt 
thou be with Me in Paradise." Therefore, again, we 
conclude that of this element of suffering for sin J esus 
could never have any personal experience. 

II. I now go on to inquire what kind of sulfering 
for sin may be conceived of as noble and worthy, and 
so not impossible to a pure and holy nature. Sin, 
though alien from the experience of a Being such as 
Christ, may yet be to Him the occasion or the cause 
of bitter pain and sorrow. There are indeed pangs of 
inward anguish on account of sin, which, in all their 
intensity, only such a Being can know. And it is only 
in proportion as our inner nature is refined into an 
approximate purity to Christ's that we can with refer- 
ence to these become " partakers of Christ's sufferings." 



PARTICIPATION IN THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. 147 

Amongst these kinds of suffering I notice, first, that 
which a pure and holy nature must feel from the mere 
contiguity of evil. In the accomplishment of His 
mission, it was necessary that He, the all-holy One, 
hating sin with an intensity of abhorrence of which 
our imperfect minds can form no adequate estimate, 
should become an inmate of our world, and dwell for 
many years in contact with its moral deformity and 
pollution. And this in itself- — the mere spectacle of 
sin, the life-long contact of the sinless with the vile — 
implied on His part bitter suffering. To this element 
of Christ's sufferings I have adverted in a preceding 
discourse, as contributing to that loneliness of spirit 
which ever marked His earthly history. But, consi- 
dered from another point of view, it is this very recoil 
of His pure heart from surrounding moral evil, this 
anguish of His soul in the inevitable contact with sin, 
which opens up to every Christian mind a medium of 
profoundest sympathy with the mind of Jesus. For 
more and more, as we grow like to Jesus, will our per- 
ception of the loathsomeness of evil be quickened, more 
and more will we shrink with sympathetic sensitive- 
ness from the foul contiguity of sin, and so, in our 
painful oppression amidst the fetid moral atmosphere of 
the world, will we become, in an ever-increasing measure, 
participants in the sufferings of our Lord. 

To man or woman of pure mind and tender con- 
science it would be intolerable to be forced to read 
through an obscene book ; what agony of mind then 
— what pain and distress of spirit more unendurable 
than sharpest bodily tortures — would be involved in a 



148 



SER3I0N VI. 



similar life-long contact with sin, not recorded merely, 
but hideously displayed in act ! Eut such an imagin- 
able case as this can only partially help us to conceive 
of the condition of Jesus in a sin-polluted world, For 
not only was His purity infinitely more sensitive and 
abhorrent of evil than that of the purest of common 
men, but His cognisance of the world's evil was far 
more keen and comprehensive. His very presence 
roused the spirit of sin that pervaded the world, into 
more violent and frightful manifestation. In hatred 
of Him, the foulest passions in man's breast displayed 
all their hatefulness. The hell of malice and revenge 
that is in the fallen spirit of man showed itself openly 
and horribly before Him. In that most terrible crime 
in history of which He was at once the witness and the 
victim, sin reached its climax. Moreover, as was for- 
merly said, He had a mind large enough to take in at 
one view the whole combined wickedness of humanity, 
and He saw sin not only in outward act, but in the 
hidden source of evil, the heart of man. No soft veil 
of conventionality disguised sin from His penetrating 
eye. ISTo illusion of words and forms and professions 
subdued, before the glance of Incarnate Truth, the 
unsightliness of hypocrisy and vice. Wherever and 
in whatsoever guise sin was, He saw it. It was to 
Him as if the mask were torn off, and a skeleton face 
revealed in all its hideousness — as if a flower-strewn 
bank was laid open, and a nest of serpents disclosed 
beneath. "With a nature formed and habituated to 
breathe the air of heaven's eternal purity, He dwelt 
amidst the charnel-house loathsomeness and corruption 



PARTICIPATION IN TEE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. 149 

of evil. And for this very reason, that He was Him- 
self without the faintest personal implication in sin, He 
suffered from contact with it an agony all the more 
acute. 

2. Another element of Christ's suffering for sin, in 
which, as w T e grow in kindred purity of nature, we 
shall learn to participate, is — The reflected or borrowed 
shame and pain which noble natures feel for the sins of 
those with whom they are closely connected. Christ 
was not a mere spectator of the world's sin, He was 
deeply implicated in the fortunes of the guilty, related 
to them by the closest ties of kindred and affection. 
And it is easy to see that this fact introduces a new 
element into our conception of His sufferings. For 
though deeds of sin and shame be always revolting to 
a pure-minded man, the spectacle becomes immeasur- 
ably more distressing when it is the sin and shame of 
one who is related to him by the ties of blood or 
friendship. There is a borrowed humiliation which 
we feel from the sins of those who are dear to us ; 
there is a keen and cruel pain which pierces a good and 
generous heart in the contemplation of a brother's 
wickedness, and which is second only, and in some 
respects not second, to the agony of personal guilt. It 
is strange what subtle bonds may blend our being with 
the being of another, by what mysterious chords soul 
may be knit to soul, till not only one heart may vibrate 
spontaneously to another's joy or sorrow, but may feel 
an almost personal moral sensitiveness in another's 
righteousness or guilt. Keflect, for instance, on the 
distress and shame which a husband may feel for a 



150 



SERMON VI. 



wife's, a wife for a husband's, dishonour. Or consider 
how close to conscious guilt is the agony of a good and 
holy father for the detected infamy of a child. There 
is a sort of organic unity in a family, so that no member 
of it can rise or fall, be honoured or disgraced, without 
implicating the rest. Bearing a deep attachment to the 
erring one, bound to him by the closest ties of blood 
and kindred, and by the deeper more mysterious affi- 
nities that connect spirit with spirit, and propagate 
character to character, — the natural relationship, more- 
over, confirmed by a thousand tendrils of memory, a 
thousand hallowed associations clasping soul to soul 
till affinity has become almost identity of being, — 
think what that father's feeling would be if his child 
should go wrong — if, after all his anxious care and 
watchful discipline, that child, perhaps his hope, his 
pride, his darling, should sink into impurity, and bring 
dishonour on a stainless name. The father, though 
himself innocent, though not literally guilty of the 
child's sin, would become relatively partaker of it ; he 
would have an impression as if the ignominy and shame 
were overflowing on himself ; — nay, he would be stung 
by an anguish in some respects more poignant than if 
the sin had been his own. The very fact that the child 
was capable of the guilty deed implies a weaker sense 
of its heinousness ; and, on the other hand, the very 
fact that the parent is one who himself shrinks with 
loathing from foul and dishonourable actions, is the 
indication in him of a sensitiveness of conscience 
which must render his perception of the sin all the 
more distressing. 



PARTICIPATION IN THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. 151 

The bearing of these principles on the case before us 
is obvious. Christ is our friend. He took upon Him 
our very nature. We are bone of His bone and flesh 
of His flesh — nay, if we may so speak, more than that, 
spirit of His spirit, heart of His heart. " Forasmuch 
as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He 
likewise took part of the same." "In all things it 
behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren/ ' 
No earthly relationship so close, so deep, so real ; no 
human affection so tender, so ardent, as that of Christ 
to His own. The most intimate of mortal unions is 
but the type and symbol of the union of Jesus and His 
redeemed. He blends and interfuses His pure Spirit 
with the common spirit of the race which He came to 
save, in such communion of feeling that there is but a 
step betwixt it and identity of being. Nothing that 
happens to us is indifferent to Him. Our minutest 
pain or grief thrills up to His mighty heart, our sins 
oppress His Spirit with an almost personal weight of 
woe. " He Himself takes our infirmities, and bears our 
sicknesses;" and in this, as in other senses, "our iniqui- 
ties are laid upon Him." More deeply and painfully 
than ever husband for a wife's dishonour, or parent for 
the ruin of a beloved child, He feels grieved, humiliated, 
overwhelmed as with conscious infamy and guilt, by 
our sins. And the ineffable purity and holiness of His 
own nature, the intense acuteness of His moral percep- 
tions, render it a more terrible thing to Him to be 
bound so intimately to the guilty and polluted. It is 
a connection with infamy from which He cannot free 
Himself, and yet which to that noble heart of purity 



152 



SERMON VI. 



is all but unendurable. It is Innocence wedded to 
Vice, Purity tied to Pollution, a living man bound 
inseparably to a loathsome corpse. We see, therefore, 
in this implication of His being with the being of the 
guilty, another way in which Christ suffered for sin. 

3. Once more, Christ suffered for sin, not only as 
bearing relatively its guilt, but also as its victim. In 
the persons of those He loved, sin transmitted to Him 
a borrowed humiliation ; but it hurt Him more deeply 
than thus, for it rose up against Him, to hate and assail 
and destroy Him. And this to such a nature as His 
was the saddest thing of all. It was not he pain 
and contumely, the loneliness, desertion, hostility, the 
manifold injuries and wrongs He endured on earth, 
that most keenly hurt Him, but it was the fact that 
these injuries were inflicted by the hands of those 
whom He loved so dearly. The wound itself was 
sharp, but there was a poison of ingratitude on the 
weapon that made it harder far to bear. Even to our 
feebler affections there is no pain that can compare 
with the pain of rejected love, or of injury and insult 
endured at the hands of those to whom our hearts 
cling. The unkindness of a friend or brother, the un- 
faithfulness or harshness of a husband or wife, to whom 
we still turn with yearning fondness — such offences, 
humiliating to a good and gentle spirit even when it is 
only the witness, become tenfold more distressing when 
it is itself the injured object of them. You remember 
with what inimitable pathos the great dramatist depicts 
the character and history of a generous kind-hearted 
old man suffering cruel wrong and ingratitude at the 



PARTICIPATION IN THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. 153 

hands of his daughters. With what infinite truth and 
tenderness is the progress of feeling delineated in the 
injured roan's breast ! At first the old man is repre- 
sented as struck with astonishment, and as all but in- 
credulous of the possibility of unkindness at the hands 
of those whom he loved so tenderly, and to whom he 
had surrendered his earthly all. Then as the proofs 
of ingratitude multiply, and can no longer be miscon- 
strued, we see him, stung with the terrible wrong, burst- 
ing forth for a while into uncontrollable fits of indigna- 
tion, flying forth to brave the wild war of the elements 
unconscious of their fury, or finding in it a strange con- 
solation for the wilder tumult of sorrow and anger 
within his breast. Then as that phase of feeling passes 
off, as passion spends itself, and he is left free to brood 
over his wrongs, the mind begins to totter under the 
weight of woe that burdens it ; — then misery and 
despair issue in madness — and then a broken heart — 
and then the grave. 

But neither in the realms of fiction or of fact can we 
find any parallel to that saddest, strangest story of in- 
gratitude, in which it is told how Incarnate Love was 
rejected at the hands of men. " He came to His own, 
and His own received Him not." They whom He 
came to save " hid, as it were, their faces from Him ; 
He was despised, and they esteemed Him not/' Had 
He come with anger on His countenance, and weapons 
of vengeance in His hands, His reception could not 
have been worse. But He came "not to condemn 
the world, but that the world through Him might be 
saved." He came, love on His lip, and gifts of benig- 



154 



SERMON VI. 



nity in His hands. He went forth, amongst men to 
heal and comfort and bless. Wherever He went, 
beneficence streamed out from Him on every side. No 
toil, or hardship, or weariness, or want, could damp 
His ardour, or interrupt His ministry of love— the 
self - forgetting, self - devoted, universal Benefactor. 
And for all this the only return He asked was — love. 
For food, healing, life — for pardon, purity, peace — for 
countless earthly blessings, and for a blessing transcend- 
ing them far as heaven transcends earth — eternal mercy 
laid at every guilty, dying sinner's feet, — for all this, 
all He wanted, or asked, or cared for, was only that 
men would love Him, open their hearts, yield up their 
affection to Him, their divinest friend. But all in 
vain ! With but slight exceptions, all He got was 
coldness, hard-heartedness, disdain. Stern looks, un- 
kind acts, met Him wherever He went. He looked 
for some to pity Him, but He found none. His very 
kindred turned against Him. A few poor men, touched 
by His heavenly words, drew towards Him for a little ; 
but as the toils of the hunters gathered closer round 
this pure and gentle One, even they forsook Him and 
fled — left Him to face His pursuers, to suffer, and to 
die, alone. What wonder if, with that heart of His 
yearning for sympathy, incapable of life without love, 
craving for affection with a longing which earthly heart 
has never known, — condescending to the lowliest, not 
rejecting the most worthless, nay, welcoming the peni- 
tent tenderness of foulest sinners, — having no happiness 
but in the recovered love of human souls to God in 
Him, — what wonder if at last His mortal strength 



PARTICIPATION IN THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. 155 

gave way, and not by bodily wounds alone, not by the 
scourging, the nails, the spear, but by the most piteous 
death that mortals know — by a broken heart, He died ! 
Surely He who thus died, beyond all men, suffered for 
sins. 

Such, then, are some of those kinds of suffering on 
account of sin which are the signs of a true nobleness 
of nature, and in which it is not the shame but the 
glory of a man to participate. In the expiatory suffer- 
ings of Christ for sin it may be impossible for any 
follower of His to share, though even with regard to 
these there is a sense in which the sorrows of Christians 
are but a perpetuation of the great sacrifice ; for in 
every act of self-denial for the world's good, they are 
" filling up that which is behind of the sufferings of 
Christ. " But whatever isolation may characterise our 
Lord's suffering for sin, contemplated in this aspect, 
there are other views of it in which the disciple may 
be regarded as entering into fullest communion with 
the Master. Believing in Him who is the only pro- 
pitiation for the sins of the world, you are not only 
delivered from guilt, but brought into such sympathy 
with the heart of the Great Sufferer, that you regard 
sin with feelings that are the reflection of His own. 
You "know Him and the fellowship of His sufferings, 
being made conformable unto His death." " Kejoice," 
then, if thus "ye are partakers of the sufferings of 
Christ." " Kejoice " in the simple fact that you suffer 
with Jesus ; for to be near Him in suffering is a nobler 
privilege than to be with other men in joy. Even 
earthly affection has taught us how possible it is for a 



156 



SERMON VI. 



loving heart to prefer poverty and hardship with some, 
to all the softness and splendour of life with others ; 
and how there may be a deeper, richer joy in sharing 
the sternness and ruggedness of the lot of one whom 
we devotedly love and honour, than in all the super- 
ficial delights of a selfish and sensual existence. And 
if that sentiment of mingled love and reverence and 
adoration, the profoundest of which the heart of man 
is capable — if devotion to Jesus possess your secret 
soul, then will you experience something of that strange 
sweet joy in sorrow, that bliss of woe with which 
martyr spirits have often welcomed the cross. For 
exaggerated though sometimes it may have been, it 
was often no unnatural and unreal feeling which 
throbbed of old in the hearts, and fired with a strange 
exultation the eyes of dying men, and which drew 
from dying lips the cry, " Welcome pain ! welcome 
the cross ! welcome dark death ! for it is my glory to 
bear them, 0 my Saviour, with Thee ! " 

" Eejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's 
sufferings," for such suffering for sin as that of which 
we have spoken is the badge of a Christ-like nature, 
the proof of a spirit akin to His. Gladness is not the 
truest sign of a noble nature in such a world as this. 
There is a sadness that rises from a deeper source in 
man's nature than the light sparkle of superficial joy. 
There is a profound melancholy more enviable than 
rapturous delight. There are tears that sometimes 
spring " from the depths of a divine despair." In the 
contemplation of evil, the sight of the suffering and 
strife and wretchedness and wrong, which oppressed 



PARTICIPATION IN THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. 157 

the Saviour's soul, what but a superficial nature can be 
selfishly joyous 1 There is enough of sorrow and sin, 
surely, still left in the world to make a thoughtful 
mind no stranger to that grief which hung like a per- 
petual shadow over the spirit of Jesus. Beholding the 
desolation and ruin of souls, what man who loves his 
brother can remain un visited by that agony of love and 
pity which broke the heart of Christ ? A child will 
sport with thoughtless levity over graves, where man's 
deeper nature will stand in reverent awe and contem- 
plation ; but it is better to be sad with the wise man, 
than merry with the child. There are men so vain 
and superficial, or so hard and selfish, that, leave them 
but their animal enjoyment, let them alone in their 
epicurean sloth and selfishness, and the moral ruin of 
a world would fail to move them ; but who would not 
rather weep with Jesus than be dry-eyed with these ! 

" Eejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of the suffer- 
ings of Christ/' for if yours be His sorrows, yours also 
shall be His joys. " When His glory shall be revealed, 
ye shall be glad also with exceeding joy." "If we 
suffer, we shall also reign with Him." " If so be that 
we suffer with Him, we shall be also glorified together." 
Your capacity of holy suffering is the proof and the 
measure of a capacity of holy joy. The ear that is 
most pained by discordance, knows best the pleasure 
of sweet sounds. The heart which enmity or estrange- 
ment wounds the deepest has ever the most exquisite 
susceptibility to love ; and the oppression and sadness 
of the spirit amidst a world of imperfection and evil, is 
the silent prophecy and the sure criterion of that joy 



158 



SERMON VI. 



unutterable which, awaits it in a world where the 
triumph of truth and goodness shall he complete. If, 
inevitable contiguity with sin distress you, estimate by 
your present pain the blessedness of that glorious future 
when you shall breathe the atmosphere of unmingled 
love and purity, when sin shall be a thing forgotten, or 
remembered only to enhance the deep joy of eternal 
good. If here, with the world's best Benefactor, your 
heart bleeds with an almost personal sense of injury 
for the souls in which sin is working bitter wrong, 
anticipate the exultation of that coming era when you 
shall company with none but the good, when spirits 
redeemed from sin, bright with ineffable purity, shall 
be your perpetual associates ; and when you and they 
— light in every mind, love in every heart — shall 
wander side by side with Jesus amid the sun-bright 
expanses of eternity. If here, oppressed with "the 
bondage of corruption," you sigh with the indignant 
impatience of the captive for the emancipation of the 
world from evil, conceive the rapture of that hour 
which the rapid years are hastening on, when the 
captivity of sin shall cease for ever, and you shall leap 
forth to liberty ! 



SEKMON VII. 



SPIRITUAL REST. 
" Return unto thy rest, O my soul ! " — Psalm cxvi. 7. 

The blessings of religion are often represented in Scrip- 
ture as comprehended under the idea of "Best," and 
the rise of the religious consciousness, the stirrings of 
spiritual anxiety and aspiration, as the instinctive 
yearning of the soul after its true rest in God. More- 
over, we are taught to conceive of this rest, not as a 
new and arbitrary gift to man, but as that which is, in 
some respects, the soul's ancient and original heritage. 
Religion is to be regarded, not as an acquisition, but as 
a restoration — not as the gaining of a new friend or 
home, but as the recovery of a lost Father — the going 
back to a former home hallowed by ancient memories, 
and reviving in the heart a thousand dormant associa- 
tions. " I will arise and go unto my Father." " Ee- 
turn unto the Lord thy God, for thou hast fallen by 
thine iniquity." " Return unto thy rest, 0 my soul 1" 
Now it is this thought which furnishes the true 
explanation at once of the sours misery and restless- 



160 



SERMON VII. 



ness in sin, and of that repose and peace which it finds 
in reconciliation to God. For the deepest unrest is 
ever that of things or beings in an unnatural or dis- 
torted condition — the unrest of aberration from a proper 
place or course, and so, of interrupted harmony and 
equipoise. The restless streams and brooks fret their 
mountain channels till they reach their proper depths 
in river or sea; and the waves of the sea itself, dis- 
turbed by the storm, heave and sway themselves to rest 
in their natural and common level again. The thunder- 
storm is but the voice of Nature's unrest, when the 
balance and equipoise of her elements are disturbed, 
and she seeks to regain the wonted repose of harmony 
and law. And so, in the moral world, the disquietude, 
dissatisfaction, restlessness of the ungodly, finds its 
interpretation in nothing so much as this, that in sin 
the soul is in an unnatural state. For although to 
fallen man sin has become a second nature, it is never 
to be forgotten that the make and structure of his 
being is not for sin, but for holiness. The original 
type of humanity is to be found in God. The normal 
condition of the spirit of man is one of holy union and 
communion with Deity. And in the feverish desires, 
the fretting cares and toils and hopes and anxieties of 
life, we may hear the unconscious murmurings of a 
nature that has lost its true level, and is seeking it in 
vain ; or in the wilder storms of human passion that 
sometimes burst forth, the intimation that in disunion 
from God the elements of our being are in fearful 
dis-harmony among themselves. Had man been born 
only for the things of time and sense, he had been 



SPIRITUAL REST. 



161 



content and happy amidst them. The crawling worm 
is haunted by no reminiscence of the skies, nor is the 
born-beggar's heart embittered by the recollection of 
better days. But to man, ill at ease and consciously 
degraded in sin, the essence of his misery is the latent 
conviction that he has fallen beneath himself. It is 
possible, indeed, for the sinful soul to reach a false 
and spurious rest, to sink into the unreal tranquillity 
of hardened impenitence, in which evil becomes its 
good. But so long as the soul has not sunk thus low, 
so long as it cannot be quite at peace in sin, its very 
restlessness and misery are at once the tradition of a 
nobler and happier past, and the prophecy of a possible 
future nobler and happier still. 

In this thought, moreover, we have the secret, not 
only of the soul's unrest in sin, but also of that true 
rest in God of which the text speaks ; for it is the rest 
of a being who has found again his proper and con- 
genial sphere. Eestored to God, man's nature is re- 
stored to harmony with itself, regains a condition in 
which all its faculties find full scope and fitting object, 
and each in perfect unison with the rest. Its noblest 
powers of thought, its deep and insatiable affections, 
its boundless moral energies, its cravings for a higher 
truth, aspirations after a purer good, and visions of a 
beauty fairer than earthly and finite things disclose — 
all find their one grand, all-absorbing, all-harmonising 
object in Him who is the alone Infinitely True and 
Holy and Fair. In reconciliation to God through 
Christ J esus the soul regains its lost equilibrium, finds 
again the centre of repose for which it had been sighing 

L 



162 



SERMON VII. 



in vain. What sensual pleasure, wealth, ease, honour, 
power, the applause of men — what even intellectual 
pursuits, and the domestic and social charities of life, 
fail to bestow, or bestow for the moment only to stimu- 
late the thirst they seem to quench, in the ineffable 
sense of union with God the soul finds at last— rest, 
satisfaction, perfect peace. " Come unto Me, all ye 
that labour and are heavy laden," is the invitation of 
Incarnate Love, " and I will give you rest." And in 
the soul that yields to this invitation there rises the 
response of its deepest nature, the instinctive throb of 
a new yet natural affection, the calm sense of existence 
fulfilled, and unexplained hope and desire solved in 
fruition — the witness in its own inmost consciousness 
that its true rest is found at last. " Eeturn unto thy 
rest, 0 my soul ! " 

Such, then, is the "rest" which true religion be- 
stows. Let us meditate for a little on some of the 
qualities or characteristics of this rest, which lend to it 
a peculiaT value and blessedness. 

1. The "rest," then, of which the text speaks, is, 
for one thing, not bodily or physical, but mental or 
spiritual rest. Physical repose, indeed, is one of the 
great and ever-recurring necessities of our nature, and 
it is strange to reflect how very much of the outward 
happiness of life is to be traced to it. When the 
physical energies have been tasked to the utmost, there 
is, as we know, a strange pleasure attached to the mere 
cessation of toil. How sweet and soothing the sensa- 
tion of rest that steals over the bodily frame when the 
strained muscle is relaxed, and the nerves are unstrung, 



SPIRITUAL BEST. 



163 



and the will flings loose the reins of control over the 
active powers, and every limb and joint and fibre are 
bathed in repose ! Who has not often felt the luxury 
of listlessness, the pleasing pain of languor, in the quiet 
evening hours that succeed to a day of hard, fatiguing 
work, when the very order of nature — her fading light, 
and gathering stillness, and tranquil solemnity of 
aspect — seem to minister to the instinct of repose which 
all living creatures feel ? And then how manifold the 
benefits conferred on man by God's gift of sleep ! How 
strangely potent the cordial which it pours into the 
exhausted frame, and from which the worn powers 
daily drink in new strength and elasticity ! What a 
boon to many the mere bliss of unconsciousness, the 
periodic escape from self, the flight from toil and care 
and weariness, when we cross the bridge that separates 
the wakeful working world from the shadowy world 
of dreams ! Surely not unworthy of infinite beneficence 
is that gift of which it is written, "He giveth His 
beloved sleep." And so again, not unnatural, however 
mistaken, is that half-sentimental dream of heaven, in 
which hearts, wearied with the conflicts and confusions 
of the world, have sometimes unconsciously reflected 
their own wistful yearnings after deliverance and rest 
— the vision of some land of serene and sheltered still- 
ness, of unbroken and imperturbable calm, where the 
echo of the world's strife shall fall no more upon the 
ear, and happy spirits, emancipated from care and toil, 
steeped in everlasting oblivion of pain and sorrow, shall 
summer high in bliss upon the hills of God. 

But there is a nobler rest than this. Physical re- 



164 



SERMON VII. 



pose, however sweet, however salutary, is but the feeble 
type of that truer rest to which the text refers — a rest 
sweeter than sleep, deeper than death, and more pure 
in its unselfish calmness than the heaven which senti- 
ment or poetry has pictured. When doubt and dis- 
belief are gone, when the object of life is found in 
Christ, when God becomes the sure portion and sweet- 
est joy of the heart, and the spirit within us, hitherto, 
it may be, groping bewildered amidst earthly hopes 
and pleasures, like one in the dark for the friendly 
hand, feels itself at last embraced in the sure grasp of 
strong and changeless love— then is the true rest of 
man, the stillness of the weary spirit in the everlast- 
ing arms. And by how much this is the nobler kind 
of rest you will not fail to perceive, if you reflect that, 
appertaining to the higher and nobler part of man's 
being, it is only repose which is independent of out- 
ward circumstances. Bodily repose reaches not to the 
true centre of man's peace. It is a blessing, whose 
domain is but a limited one, and continually exposed 
to invasion. Eut mental repose intrenches itself in 
the deepest region of man's nature, and renders him 
impregnable to outward assault. Stretch the body in 
luxurious ease, free it from pain and toil, smooth away 
every crease from the couch of its composure, yet, if 
the heart within be weary and anxious, the conscience 
disturbed, or the imagination unsettled, it is a very 
truism to say that in such a case there is no real rest. 
Bodily tranquillity becomes unfelt and unenjoyed in the 
deeper trouble that shakes' the spirit. But, on the 
other hand, over bodily distractions a mind that is 



SPIRITUAL REST. 



165 



deeply tranquil asserts its superiority. Calm and 
steady burns the guarded light of holy peace, even 
amid the gusts and storms of outward fortune. To 
many a troubled couch the Spirit of God has come in 
visitations of unearthly peace. On the cheek wasted 
by disease, or on the pale and pain-contracted brow, has 
not seldom been witnessed the calmness of a heavenly 
rest ; and from lips quivering with anguish have fallen 
words of meek resignation, and even joyful hope, that 
told how the peace of the spirit can triumph over out- 
ward pain. JSTor only is this the most independent, 
it is also the most constant and enduring rest. Phy- 
sical repose can only be periodic. The enjoyment of 
bodily rest must be purchased by ever-recurring inter- 
vals of exertion. Continuous inaction becomes more 
unendurable than labour ; the pain of effort and toil 
less irksome than the pain of unvaried and inglorious 
ease* Moreover, were it possible to prolong the sweets 
of physical repose through a lifetime, it is a repose 
which soon, at the latest, must be rudely broken. Could 
a man shut out all causes of mental disquietude, and 
pass life in one continuous dream of selfish ease, the 
hour is coming in which he can sleep no more. Death 
is no dreamless slumber ; to the self-indulgent and the 
sensual it is rather the waking up of the soul to the 
awful burden of neglected responsibilities. The rest of 
the soul, on the contrary, is essentially continuous. It 
needs no intervals of unrest to sweeten its enjoyment. 
It never ceases, and never satiates. It is not the 
occasional refreshment, but the ever-flowing current of 
the inner life : " Thy peace shall be as a river, and thy 



166 



SERMON VII. 



righteousness as the waves of the sea." Even amidst 
the outer toil and distraction of the world, it is "the 
peace of God which keepeth the heart and mind." Nor 
does death, which disunites and disturbs all else, for a 
moment interrupt its continuity : for the rest of the 
soul in Christ is identical with the rest of heaven — 
"the rest which remaineth for the people of God." 
Or if that differ from this, it is only in degree, not in 
kind j and the repose of the glorified succeeds to the 
peace of the faithful on earth, just as the rest of a child 
borne in loving arms on a journey, becomes only a little 
deeper and less disturbed when it sleeps on in the same 
arms at home. 

2. The " Kest" of which the psalmist speaks may be 
described, again, as the Best, not of Immobility, but 
of Equipoise, 

There is in nature a kind of rest which is to be as- 
cribed to the mere absence of force — the rest of immo- 
bility or inertia. There is another kind of rest which 
is the result of the highest exercise of force — the rest 
of balance, equipoise, of action and reaction. So in the 
soul there is a rest of torpor, when the inert intellect 
rusts, the unexercised affections stiffen into selfishness, 
and the will, long unused to effort, becomes enervated. 
And, on the other hand, there is another and nobler 
kind of mental and spiritual rest which is not the negation 
of effort, but the seemingly negative result of the high- 
est positive exercise of inward power. It may, indeed, 
consist with the intensest outward activity ; but even 
where there is no apparent activity, the very stillness, 
calmness, repose of the spirit, may be the result of the 



SPIRITUAL REST. 



167 



inward action of powers working in fullest energy, yet 
with a mutual balance and harmony so perfect as to 
seem to the superficial observer identical with absolute 
immobility. It is but a vulgar error to measure force, 
physical or mental, only by motion, stir, outward activ- 
ity. As much or greater power may be at work to pro- 
duce stillness, as is manifested by the most violent out- 
ward commotion. Repose, as the commonest examples 
prove, may be the high and difficult result of manifold 
powers in constant operation, combining, modifying, 
blending, balancing each other's effects. When two 
equal and opposite forces, to take the simplest case, 
strain at a bar of iron, the combined force employed 
may be enough to hurl a heavy missile with an arrow's 
speed ; yet the result is stillness, rest. The pressure 
of the atmosphere on our bodily frames is, we know, 
sufficient in itself to tear us limb from Hmb ; yet, be- 
cause of the counterbalancing force that meets it, we 
move and act unconscious of its existence. In the air 
we breathe, in the water of the stillest lake or sea, there 
is no stillness of mere inertia, but beneath the outer 
semblance of repose there is the activity of attractive 
and repellent forces ever with well -matched power 
striving against, but gaining no advantage over each 
other. And all around us, in the natural world, mighty 
agencies are at work, which, if any one or more of them 
were left to act unresisted, or if the balance that sub- 
sists between them were ever so slightly disturbed, 
might break forth in the most terrible conflict of nature's 
element; yet are these agencies, in their infinitely 
diversified character and endless complexity of opera- 



168 



SERMON VII. 



tions, combined in such, exquisite proportions, adjusted 
in such perfect equilibrium, that the result is the order, 
harmony, repose of nature — the grand rest of the ma- 
terial universe. 

Now, analogous to this is that " rest " of the soul on 
which we are now reflecting. For in the repose of a 
saintly spirit there is latent power. The calmness, the 
peace, the holy tranquillity that sometimes breathes 
over a matured Christian's mind, has in it nothing 
in common with mere listless inaction ; it is rather 
the last result and highest expression of mighty and 
heavenly energies at work within the breast. In the 
inner world, not less than in the outer, there are coun- 
teracting or conflicting elements that require, for the 
preservation of order and harmony, the maintenance of 
the most perfect balance amongst them ; and it is to 
the disturbance of this balance — to the restlessness of 
an ill-regulated, or the wilder disorder of an ungoverned 
spirit, that the misery of man is greatly to be traced. 
Even in this world, kept in check though the lawless 
and discordant elements of our nature may be by a 
thousand incidental causes, there is yet enough in the 
experience of every sinful heart to prove that, estranged 
from God, the ruling and harmonising principle of our 
inner being is lost. How little of unity or consistency 
is there in the lives of most men ! How very many 
are the mere creatures of impulse — of fitful inclinations 
and unrestrained desires chasing each other over the 
restless surface of the spirit ! "What account, again, 
can we give of the fretful wayward tempers perpetually 
disturbing the inward composure of some^ or of the 



SPIRITUAL REST. 



169 



wilder excesses of passion that desolate for ever the 
peace of others ? Or how, in fine, explain the constant 
strife that is going on, with more or less vehemence, 
in most minds — between reason and inclination, con- 
science and passion, the higher and nobler law of our 
being and the law in the members that warreth against 
the law in the mind ? How, but that the controlling 
power that alone can give order, equipoise, unity, to 
the inner world, has become paralysed or enfeebled. 
And if it be so even with all the adventitious restraints 
of the present life, who can tell what fearful manifesta- 
tions of the evil that is in the heart of man may await 
the godless soul in that world where all restraint is 
gone ? There are latent destructive energies, possibili- 
ties of wrong and wretchedness, in every sinful breast, 
which here only rarely display themselves, and at which 
we can but dimly guess. 

Now the rest of the believer is the return of the soul 
to harmony with itself. The inward repose which, 
sooner or later, true religion brings, is the result of the 
final conquest and subjugation of man's low T er nature. 
It indicates the presence of a new principle of order, 
the introduction of a new element of harmony and 
coherence among the wayward powers of the soul. The 
peace of the holy mind is the peace, not of stagna- 
tion, but of self-conquest. Its intensity, therefore, the 
amount of moral force that is in it, is to be measured, 
not by what it displays, but by what it implies — by 
the strength of those evil passions which have been 
subdued, by the impetuosity of those appetites which 
have been mastered, by the repellent energy of those 



170 



SERMON VII. 



powers of man's nature which have been reconciled. 
The calm and resistless power of Law can be ganged 
only by the chaos of seemingly conflicting elements out 
of which it educes harmony and peace. So, how much 
moral power does that calmness and quietude of a 
saintly spirit often bespeak ! Under the tranquil sim- 
plicity of a meek and humble mind, what unrelaxing 
self-restraint, what restless vigilance, what stern re- 
pression of vain thoughts, ambitious longings, selfish, 
or envious, or unamiable feelings — what mightier than 
earthly power and energy may be present, though hid 
from outward observation. Estimate actions not by 
their overt results merely, but by the real though 
latent power that is implied in them, and the most 
brilliant deeds of outward heroism will sometimes fall 
far short of those quiet victories over self, to which the 
Omniscient eye alone is witness. 

This process of self-subjugation, it is true, may be by 
no means an instantaneous or rapid one. The first and 
immediate effect of the soul's return to God is often 
very different from that repose and calmness of which 
we have spoken. For just as returning bodily health 
may first be indicated by the racking pains of conva- 
lescence in the sick man's frame, or as the fearful strife 
and carnage of revolution may be the earliest intima- 
tion of a reviving spirit of social freedom, so He whose 
kingdom is righteousness and peace may usher in its 
advent by " sending not peace, but a sword/' The rise 
of religion in the heart may be indicated by the bitter 
pangs of an awakened conscience, and by the painful 
struggle of spirit with sense, of the reviving element 



SPIRITUAL REST. 



171 



of moral freedom with the old and inveterate tyranny 
of sin in the soul. And it may only be by a long-pro- 
tracted process of holy discipline — by many a weary 
hour of inward conflict, fainting, striving, falling, re- 
viving, yet ever, on the whole, growing in conformity 
to the will of God — that the soul attains at last to the 
complete mastery over self, the perfect inward harmony 
of a spirit in which every thought and feeling and 
desire are " brought into captivity to the obedience of 
Christ." But when that glorious end is gained, when 
self is quelled, and duty reigns supreme within the 
breast, when 6 6 the immortal soul becomes consistent in 
self-rule " — then the " weary strife of frail humanity" 
is at an end, and a repose — oh how deep, how tranquil, 
how sublime ! — diffuses itself throughout the spirit — a 
repose in which there is at once calmness and power, 
the sweet serenity of an infant's slumbers, yet the 
strength of an angel of God. 

3. It is but a further development of the same 
thought to say, once more, that the true " Eest " of the 
soul is that, not of Inactivity, but of Congenial Exertion. 

Labour is rest to the active and energetic spirit. To 
not a few minds, congenial activity, eager, absorbing, 
all but incessant, is the element in which they find 
repose. And the ardent and enthusiastic soul, con- 
scious of power, and delighting in work that calls it 
forth, will sometimes seem to enjoy perfect serenity 
only in the whirl of occupation, as the bird on the 
wing, in the flow of joyous strength, while it cleaves 
the air at fullest speed, yet seems as if at rest, poised 
on its outspread pinions. 



172 



SERMON VII. 



For it is to be remembered that the toil that is unfelt 
is no toil ; and the exercise of the mind's faculties on 
congenial objects, is not only unaccompanied by any 
irksome sense of toil, but is attended, and probably, 
were it not for the necessity of using gross material 
organs, would ever continue to be attended, with posi- 
tive delight. Fatigue, waste, exhaustion, belong only 
to matter and material organisation. The mind itself 
does not waste or grow weary, and but for the weight 
of the weapons wherewith it works, it might think, and 
imagine, and love on for ever. Even with all its pre- 
sent drawbacks, a spirit of great power and energy, so 
far from resting, frets and feels ill at ease in inactivity. 
To it inaction is unrest and torture — no work so hard 
as doing nothing. Only in the putting forth of its 
energies, in the evolution of its inward power, in the 
devotion of thought and feeling to congenial pursuits, 
does it find itself tranquil, unburdened, at rest. That 
congenial activity is not work, but rest, a thousand 
familiar examples prove. Eelaxation or amusement, 
to take an obvious one, is often, considered in the mere 
form of it, very hard work. Yet it is no work. So 
long as the bodily faculties bear the strain, what might 
otherwise be the most exhausting toil, becomes, by 
reason of the stimulus of inward delight, recreation, 
refreshment, rest to the spirit. So again, the mental 
activity of the student, whether in apprehending or 
excogitating thought, is not felt to be labour, if it be 
spent on a subject in which the mind is intensely 
interested. There is no work that has so little of the 
sense of work in it, as successful thought on a con- 



SPIRITUAL REST. 



173 



genial theme. Let but the supply of nervous excite- 
ment continue unexhausted, and on the free-flowing 
stream of thought the mind might float on for ever in 
uninterrupted activity, yet in perfect repose. Once 
more, the work of the painter or the musician enthu- 
siastically devoted to his art, is work from which the 
sense of effort is gone. Not to work while the mind 
and heart are full — to suffer the glowing conception to 
pass away unexpressed, to repress the tide of song 
welling up to the lip — this would be the true toil and 
unrest to these. In this case, too, the spirit rests in 
working. 

Now it is in its application to the noblest of all work 
that this principle receives its highest illustration. The 
service of God, beyond all other kinds of labour, may 
become the most perfect rest to the soul. For it is 
when employed in this work that the soul is in its 
most congenial sphere of activity. The soul, by its 
original structure, was designed and adapted for this 
as its special work ; and it is yet possible for it, as 
redeemed and restored in Christ Jesus, to reach that 
glorious state of moral elevation in which goodness 
becomes spontaneous, duty delight, the service of God 
perfect freedom. Moreover, there is no art that is 
capable of calling forth in the human spirit a more 
impassioned devotion than the art of being and of 
doing good. It may be from a lofty impulse and with 
a glowing spirit that the hand of genius shapes the 
marble, or vivifies the canvass into the outward form 
of human beauty or majesty. But there is a work 
nobler far, and capable of kindling and concentrating 



174 



SERMON VII. 



in a holy ardour every energy of man's nature— the 
work of moulding the imperishable spirit within us 
into the likeness of the Infinitely Good and Fair. 
Wherever, therefore, this work becomes, as in every 
earnest mind it must sooner or later become, the grand 
and absorbing pursuit, difficulties will vanish, and the 
sense of effort be unfelt in the intensity of inward feel- 
ing. A divine ideal has dawned upon the spirit, and 
it is all on fire to realise that ideal in itself and other 
souls. "Whatever obstacles impede its endeavours, give 
way before the force of strong desire ; and the difficul- 
ties of the Christian life become at last as the me- 
chanical difficulties of a familiar art that have long 
ceased to be noted. 

It is true, indeed, that this blessed facility of good- 
ness comes not at the first to any, and may to many be, 
even to the close of their earthly history, all but un- 
known. Even sincere Christians may oftentimes feel 
in dutyiniore of the friction of self-denial than the free 
motion of delight. The yoke of Christ may need long 
to be worn before it ceases to gall the wearer, and 
becomes " a yoke which is easy and a burden which is 
light." Even earthly and secular arts are never easy at 
the first. ~No genius can render its possessor all at 
once and without practice superior to mechanical diffi- 
culties. And for the acquisition of the spiritual art, 
the art of pleasing God, there is a peculiar intractable- 
ness and indocility in the mind of man. . Nay, for 
those arts there is not seldom found in individual 
minds a strong inherent aptitude ; but for this not only 
is there in no case in fallen man a natural predilection, 



SPIRITUAL REST. 



175 



but there is ever a natural aversion and obstinacy to 
be combated. But as in those so in this, facility conies 
with use. The hand that at first, with laboured effort, 
feebly and disjointedly struck out the simplest air of 
music, learns by-and-by, with almost instinctive rapidity 
and lightness of touch, to sweep the notes, unconscious 
of all but the delight of harmony. And so, rising from 
earthly to heavenly things, is there not a diviner art 
in which holy hearts, by God's grace, may learn, with 
purer, deeper delight, to discourse a nobler melody? 
As love to Christ deepens in the soul that is truly 
given to Him, the work which it prompts us to do for 
Him loses the feeling of effort, and passes into pleasure. 
Less and less of set purpose do we need to constrain 
the mind to think of Him, or to approach Him in the 
formal attitude of devotion. The idea of Christ in the 
holy mind becomes gradually blended with all the 
actions of its daily life ; thought goes out to Him as 
by a divine instinct ; an ever- acting attraction draws 
the heart upwards to its great and first object, and life 
becomes an unconscious yet continuous prayer. The 
transition from motive to act, from holy intention and 
design to holy doing, becomes less and less marked, 
until at last the will acquires an almost mechanical 
certainty, an almost unconscious smoothness and ra- 
pidity of action. And so, with the unfettered ease of 
one "who playeth well upon an instrument, " from the 
many-stringed harp of life the soul renders up to God 
the sweet melody of holy deeds. Then indeed has it 
" returned into its rest." Then indeed has it attained 
to that blessed state, in which its only repose is in 



176 



SERMON VII. 



goodness, in which goodness becomes to it a very 
necessity, in which holy thoughts and works are to the 
sonl as devoid of effort as song to a bird or incense to 
flowers — the state of those redeemed and glorified ones, 
of whom it can be said at once that "they have 
entered into rest," and that " they rest not day nor 
night," but " are before the throne of God, and serve 
Him day and night in His temple." 

4. There is yet one other aspect in which the soul's 
"rest" in God may be contemplated — viz., as a rest 
that is not absolute, but relative. 

As in the outward, so in the inward and spiritual 
world, there may be progress without effort, rapid 
advancement that is consistent with perfect repose. 
When the wearied child is taken up into the parent's 
arms, though there relatively at rest, it may yet be 
moving more rapidly and steadily homewards than its 
own tottering feet could bear it. Eelatively to the 
carriage or vessel that conveys him, the traveller may 
be in perfect stillness, whilst absolutely in swift pro- 
gress to his destination. Or again, whilst the aspect 
of stillest repose sits on the face of the visible creation, 
with what inconceivable velocity is this globe on which 
we dwell whirled onward in its orbit. The most stable 
and moveless objects — the rooted oak that identifies 
the spot where it grows for centuries ; the everlasting 
hills, that in their changeless stillness rebuke the rest- 
less mutability of man — are every moment hurried on 
through space with a speed wherewith thought cannot 
cope. In like manner there is in the moral world an 
order which embraces alike our activity and our still- 



SPIRITUAL REST. 



177 



ness, in virtue of which, our swiftest onward progress 
may consist with our deepest apparent rest. The range 
of human activity, even in the highest and holiest 
sphere of labour, is but a limited one, and the point is 
soon reached where our human insufficiency is taken 
up into the all-sufficiency of God. As the realm of 
our knowledge is infinitely exceeded by that of our 
ignorance, so is the contracted sphere of our activity by 
that boundless region in which all human activity is 
vain. In the moral, as in the material world, we are 
ever " encompassed by eternal laws," which are the 
complement of our feeble agency, and which do in- 
finitely more for us than we can do for ourselves. 
"Whilst, therefore, it is a great thing to be an earnest 
worker in Christ's service, yet the Christian life is not 
mainly a life of action, but of trust — not of independent 
exertion, but of self-abandonment to the working of a 
mightier agency than ours. Even at its outset it is not 
work, but faith. The beginning of true religion is not 
the setting out on a new course in the proud conscious- 
ness of unexhausted strength and resolution, but rather 
the casting of the spirit worn with the burden, soiled 
with the dust of life's friendless journey, on One who 
has offered, and is infinitely able, to sustain it. And 
so in its subsequent progress, whilst there is an aspect 
in which religion may be contemplated as a life of 
strenuous work, there is another and higher in which 
it must be viewed as a life of resignation and of rest. 
Calmly as the midnight voyager sleeps, whilst under 
watchful guidance the vessel bears him onwards, so 
calmly, with such trustful humility, does the believer 

M 



178 



SERMON VII. 



commit himself and his fates for time and eternity to 
the unslurabering providence of God. Staying his 
hand, indeed, from no duty, withholding from no work 
of self- improvement or of beneficent activity, yielding 
never to that spurious humility which is hut the dis- 
guise of indolent fatalism, he yet ever retains in his 
spirit the unanxious quietness of one who knows that 
results are not in his hand, but God's. It is little, at 
best, that he can do to help on the world's progress, or 
his own; but whether he work or forbear from, work- 
ing, he knows that "the Father worketh hitherto, and 
will work." In the strife with sin, in the contem- 
plation of moral evil withstanding God's work in the 
world, there may be much to discourage an earnest 
mind ; but ever when doubts harass, or abortive efforts 
distress the spirit, and the sense of our human weakness 
becomes most oppressive, what relief to pass out of self 
into God, and to stay our feebleness on the everlasting 
arm ! In the quiet confidence of faith, in the assurance 
that, independently of man's petty activities, the mighty 
revolutions of the moral word are ceaselessly moving 
on, and that all things are working together for good 
to them that love God, there is rest for the believing 
soul. "My puny efforts," is his thought, "are not 
necessary to God. ' He can work with them or with- 
out them. Though I and hundreds of such weak 
workers fail, He fails never.' There is a blessed con- 
summation to which, though the motion be impercep- 
tible to us, all things are tending. I work to hasten it 
if I may, and if I may not, yet not less will I believe 
that God's great day is coming. I will stay my soul 



SPIRITUAL REST. 



179 



on God. I will ' rest in the Lord, and wait patiently 
for Him.' 6 Eeturn unto thy rest, 0 my soul ! ' " 

Such, then, is that rest which is the blessed heritage 
of the soul in God. Let me conclude these reflections 
by reminding you that it is a rest which is attainable 
through Christ alone. "Hb man cometh unto the 
Father but by Him." The way, else untrodden and 
impassable, between earth and heaven, between the 
region of selfishness and sin and the pure region of 
eternal calm and rest, Jesus hath consecrated by the 
shedding of His precious blood, so that all who will 
may have boldness to enter in. It is no mere local 
distance, no outward or material obstacle, that separates 
the sinful soul from its true home and rest in God. If 
it were, if the " rest that remaineth for the people of 
God" were only some far-off scene of outward bliss 
and beauty, Jesus would not be the Saviour we need. 
A mere mechanical exercise of power, a mere material 
omnipotence, might translate us from life's toil and 
sorrow to such a rest. But not such is the transition 
we need. No local change could bring us nearer to 
Him in whom every spirit lives and moves and has its 
being. The heaven which God's presence brings is 
already in local contiguity to saint and sinner alike. 
What keeps the sinner out of it is not material but 
moral barriers : break down these, and heaven's sweet 
rest would stream into the spirit. Guilt and sin separ- 
ate the soul from God as the widest wastes of untravelled 
space could never separate. Eemove these, and the 
distance is at once annihilated. A purified soul flies 



180 



SERMON VII. 



instantly, as by an inevitable and resistless affinity, to 
its rest in the bosom of God. And guilt and sin J esus 
alone can remove. From that sense of demerit, that 
painful consciousness of evil, which makes it terrible 
for a human soul to face the Infinite Purity, there is 
no escape but in Him whose blood cleanses from all 
sin. From that dread selfishness that kills in man's 
heart all nobler, diviner affections and aspirations, and 
makes the sinful soul shrink from God as the diseased 
eye from light, there is no deliverance but in that 
mighty restorer, Himself incarnate love, who revives 
within the heart its lost susceptibilities of goodness. 
Clothing it with an innocence that is but the reflection 
of His own, kindling in it a love that is pure as the 
heaven from whence its fire is caught, Jesus brings the 
finite soul again into holiest, sweetest union with the 
Infinite, opens to it heaven's door, and bids it go in 
and find in God its true joy and rest. Who would 
not yield the soul into this divine Saviour's hands ! 
Who would not listen and respond to the invitation, 
while still, as of old — infinite pathos in His pleading- 
voice — He offers pardon to the guilty, purity to the 
defiled, peace, joy, hope, heaven, to the wretched, or 
that which includes them all — that strange unearthly 
blessing — rest to the weary and heavy-laden soul ! 



SERMON VIII. 



SPIRITUAL PROSPERITY. 

"Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in 
health, even as thy soul prospereth."— 3 John, 2. 

Theee are two worlds in which every man lives, two 
distinct yet equally real scenes of existence in which 
we spend the days and hours of life. To the outward 
world, with its material objects and interests, its scenes 
of beauty or deformity ; its busy throngs of men and 
women ; its houses, cities, fields ; its cares and toils 
and pleasures, — to this external sphere of existence no 
man altogether or exclusively belongs. You have but 
to close the eye or abstract the thoughts from outer 
things, and instantly you pass into another region : 
you become, as it were, the dweller in an inner world, 
— that strange mysterious region of thoughts and feel- 
ing and desires, of memory and conscience and will — 
that microcosm, that little but most real world within 
every human breast. To the majority of men, indeed, 
the latter is but a comparatively untrodden region, a 
country with whose wondrous aspects they are little 
familiar, to whose inhabitants they are all but strangers, 



182 



SERMON VIII. 



whose hidden depths they have seldom attempted to 
explore. Yet, known or unknown, frequented or unex- 
plored, not less real are the scenes, not less marvellous 
the phenomena, not less stirring and complicated the 
events and interests of the secret world which the eye 
of consciousness surveys, than are those of the world 
we behold with the eye of sense. 

Corresponding to these two worlds, the external and 
the internal, there are two lives we all may be said to 
lead, — the outer life of sense, the inner hidden life and 
history of the soul. In no case do physical condition 
and circumstances constitute the whole life of a man. 
Every soul, too, has a history. Beneath the vicissitudes 
and fluctuations of the former a deeper current ever 
runs. There is in every individual case a secret ma- 
chinery at work beneath the surface, of which the 
movements above it are but the partial and uncertain 
indications. The visible material life is but the scaf- 
folding under which the unseen and eternal life is 
rearing. The world, that notes the outward events 
and incidents of your life, discerns, after all, but a part, 
and that the most insignificant part, of the history of 
your being. And were each individual in this assembly 
to narrate to us the story of his past life, to describe to 
us with all minuteness in what spot he was born, in 
what places and houses he has dwelt, what positions in 
society he has occupied, what profession or trade he 
has followed, what money he has gained or lost, through 
what external changes of health and sickness, wealth 
and indigence, prosperity and adversity, he has passed ; 
however interesting it might be to contemplate the 



SPIRITUAL PROSPERITY. 



183 



strangely diversified fortunes of so many human beings, 
yet after all, in narrating them, they would have left 
still untouched the half, and by far the more important 
half, of their real life. For, whether you have been 
accustomed to think of the fact or no, in the case of 
each individual who hears me there has been, amidst 
all these multifarious outward events and interests, 
another and more momentous history going on all the 
while. With respect to each of us, there has been, 
from the dawn of our existence, a mental as well as a 
material history — a life of the soul, a course of inward 
progress or retrogression, a series of changes for good 
or evil in the character of that mysterious dweller 
beneath every breast, more worthy to be chronicled, 
fraught, would we but believe it, with interest deeper, 
more momentous far, than the fortunes and vicissitudes 
of our outward career. We spend our years, it is 
written, as a tale that is told ; but there is, may we 
not say, an under-plot in the story of every human 
life ; and however stirring be the narrative of our out- 
ward experience, there is ever a deeper pathos, a more 
awful and absorbing interest, gathered around the 
history of the soul. 

In the passage before us, the apostle, as you will 
perceive at a glance, makes reference to the two courses 
of human experience of which we have just spoken — 
the outward and the inward. The text is simply an 
expression of affectionate desire for the welfare of one 
who seems to have been very dear to the writer. It 
is the friendly greeting ef a believer to a brother in 
Christ. And you perceive that the particular form it 



184 



SERMON VI II. 



takes is, not that merely of a simple wish for the 
friend's happiness, but of a wish more specifically for 
his happiness, his prosperity, at once in the inward 
and the outward life : in other words, for both his 
temporal and spiritual prosperity. Moreover, you will 
observe that the apostle makes the latter the measure 
or standard according to which he desires that his 
friend's outward or temporal prosperity should be 
regulated. " May you, my friend," is his sentiment, — 
"may you be as prosperous outwardly as you are 
inwardly ; may the current of your outward life flow 
on as happily as flows the course of your spiritual 
being, — may you be happy as you are holy!" The 
idea thus enunciated may suggest to us a not unprofit- 
able train of meditation, if we follow it out a little 
further, considering first, what is to be understood by 
prosperity of soul ; and then, why this prosperity of 
soul should be made the measure of outward prosperity, 
or, in other words, why a believer should desire for his 
friend just so much temporal prosperity as he already 
possesses of inward and spiritual.- 

I. Of what in the language of the world is commonly 
designated prosperity, perhaps the two main elements 
are Wealth and Power. The individual who is grow- 
ing richer or rising in station, the community or nation 
whose internal resources are increasing, whose influence 
and importance are extending, is universally held to be 
in a prosperous condition. It will not be difficult to 
see that there are in the spiritual condition of man 
elements analogous to these, of which his inward pros- 



SPIRITUAL PROSPERITY. 



185 



perity may be said to consist. There is a wealth, 
there is a power, of the soul. 

To take the first of these, there is, it will need very 
little reflection to perceive, a wealth which may be pre- 
dicated of the inward as well as of the outward life. 
There is, in no exclusively metaphorical sense, a riches 
of the soul, the inner spiritual part of a man, as well as 
of the outward and physical. Money, property, worldly 
goods, are not more real possessions than thought, 
knowledge, wisdom. Nor are the outward comforts 
and luxuries, the gratifications of sense and appetite 
that may be procured by the former, more literally a 
man's own, what belongs to him, what makes him 
richer, than are warm affections, a fertile imagination, 
a memory stored with information, and, above all, a 
heart full of God's grace. The common phraseology of 
life recognises this fact, when we speak, for instance, 
of "a richly- furnished mind," a mind "rich in intel- 
lectual resources," " a rich vein of thought," " an ample 
fund of information," and the like. And the word of 
God adopts the same idea with reference to divine 
things, when it applies to the spiritual condition of 
the believer such language as the following, — Hath 
not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith V 1 
"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all 
wisdom;" "Poor, yet making many rich; having 
nothing, yet possessing all things;" "There is that 
maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing ; there is that 
maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches." 

Nor let it be said that this is merely the language 
of metaphor. It is the language of metaphor, but of 



186 



SERMON VIII. 



more than metaphor, — and a moment's thought will 
convince you that it is. For, to think only of mere 
intellectual acquirements, take two men, one in com- 
paratively straitened circumstances, yet possessed of 
great mental abilities and attainments — the other over- 
flowing with money, yet narrow-souled and ignorant; 
you would not hesitate to say which is really the richer 
of the two. The wealth of the one may be invisible 
and impalpable compared with the other's. The soul 
and its treasures are alike unseen ; and in the outward 
aspect of the body there may be little to distinguish 
the one from the other. But yet, beneath that bosom, 
in the one case, there dwells a soul in whose invisible 
repositories are laid up stores of intellectual riches, 
whilst emptiness and barrenness are the only character- 
istics of the other. 

And if this be true of mere intellect, if even secular 
knowledge constitute a wealth more valuable than any 
outward possession, surely not less true must the same 
thought be when applied to that wisdom which maketh 
wise unto salvation. I do not know who in this as- 
sembly is the man most largely endowed with this 
world's wealth; but surely that man amongst us is 
indeed the richest, who bears within his bosom the 
treasure of a soul at peace with God, and safe for all 
eternity ! There may be in this house not a few who, 
during the year that is past,* have added to their 
worldly gains ; but if there be one amongst us in whose 
soul the grace of God's Holy Spirit has found a resting- 
place, on whose mind there has dawned at last the 
* Preached on the last day of the year 1848. 



SPIRITUAL PROSPERITY. 



187 



knowledge of God as a reconciled Father in Jesus 
Christ, and whose ere while joyless spirit is now lighted 
up with, the calm deep joy and peace of a believer — 
oh, surely such a man, beyond all others, may be con- 
gratulated as one to whom the past has been a year of 
" prosperity ! " Or if there be those of our number 
whose inward experience, during the months that have 
fled, has been one of growing faith, and purity, and 
love — of faith that rests upon Jesus with a more and 
more childlike trust, of a purity to which sin in every 
form becomes more abhorrent, of a love which every 
day's successive intercourse with its heavenly object 
has rendered more intense ; then, indeed, to such we 
may say, Yours has been an accession of wealth, for 
which any conceivable increase of worldly fortune were 
but a poor equivalent. Nay, yours is the only real 
wealth. For money, property, every worldly posses- 
sion, is out of the man. It does not come into the 
soul. It can be separated from him ; it is but an acci- 
dent, not an essential property of his being. But 
knowledge, faith, spiritual-mindedness, love to Christ, 
these are a sort of wealth that go into and become 
transfused through the very essence of the man. They 
are locked up in no outward repository. Their pos- 
sessor cannot leave them behind him with an uneasy 
mind to the care of others, or sleep with a feeling of 
insecurity for his treasures. They are laid up in the 
inmost recesses of his soul — they are part and parcel 
of the man himself. His very identity must be 
destroyed before they can be reft from him. Yours, 
too, is the only unvarying wealth. The money or 



188 



SERMON Vlll. 



property of your prosperous neighbour is by its very 
nature fluctuating in value. Bich to-day, by some of 
the perpetually occurring vicissitudes of life, his secur- 
est investment may to-morrow become worthless. But 
the wealth of the soul is standard wealth; it has the 
stamp of Heaven's mintage upon it, and is always the 
same. A soul, on which the image of Christ is im- 
pressed, is a thing precious in the eye of Him who 
judgeth by the rule of infinite rectitude. It is precious 
everywhere, and for ever ; it has not, like man's wealth, 
a different value in different countries, and at different 
times ; it will pass current everywhere — it is free of 
the universe. Yours, finally, is the only lasting wealth. 
The time will come when the richest in this house to- 
day must abandon his wealth for ever. Whatever you 
have of this sort, though you should carry it safe up 
to the grave's brink, there you must leave it. You 
have but a loan, a life-interest of it. Death will rob 
you of everything, to the very garment that covers 
your body — yea, of that body itself. The only thing 
you shall be able to keep, is that which you have 
stored up in the soul itself. That alone will go out 
with the soul into eternity. — " Beloved, I wish above 
all things " that thus your souls may prosper. 

The other element we have mentioned as commonly 
included in the idea of " prosperity," is power. He is 
universally esteemed a prosperous man in his outward 
circumstances, who is advancing or has risen from com- 
parative lowliness and obscurity to a position of emi- 
nence and influence in society. He, on the contrary, 
is deemed unfortunate, who has been reduced from a 



SPIRITUAL PROSPERITY. 



189 



former station of rank and power to one of indigence 
and meanness. The servant who has become the 
master, the subject who has gained the sovereign's 
place, is regarded as eminently prosperous. The de- 
throned monarch, the great man degraded to a position 
of servitude, is looked upon as everything the reverse. 

IsTow, to this element of prosperity also there is a 
parallel in the inward life. We may be inwardly as 
well as outwardly powerful. In the little world within 
the breast there are stations of rank, dominion, author- 
ity, to which we may aspire, or from which we may 
fall. There is an inward slavery, baser than any bodily 
servitude; there is an inward rule and governance of 
a man's spirit, an object of loftier ambition far than 
the possession of any earthly crown or sceptre. For 
self-government is indeed the noblest rule on earth. 
The highest sovereignty is that of the man who can 
say, "He hath made us kings unto God." The truest 
conquest is where the soul is " bringing every thought 
into captivity to the obedience of Christ/' The monarch 
of his own mind is the only real potentate. 

And that this is not, any more than in the former 
case, a purely figurative use of words, a moment's 
thought will convince you. There is a real subjection, 
degradation, slavery of spirit, to which we may be 
reduced ; there is a real power, freedom, emancipation, 
to which we may attain. It is not a mere metaphor, 
for instance, when, in common language, we say that 
the profligate man is " the slave of his appetites ; " or 
when the word of God employs the same style of de- 
scription in such expressions as these : " Whosoever 



190 



SERMON VIII. 



committeth sin is the servant of sin ; " " The truth shall 
make you free ; " " Sin shall not have dominion over 
you j " "Delivered from the bondage of corruption into 
the glorious liberty of the sons of God ; " " God hath 
given to us the spirit of power and of a sound mind." 

Tor is there not a real bondage, to take the most 
palpable example, in the case of the sensualist, the 
intemperate man, the impure or passionate man ? If 
there be any one here of this character, how true, how 
sad, how debasing his inward bondage ! Tyranny is 
always obnoxious to its victim. But you would feel it 
to be the worst of all tyranny, to be all but intolerable, 
if your tyrant resided constantly in your own family 
circle, obtruding his hateful surveillance, his despotic 
interference, into your most secret hours of retirement. 
But here, surely, there is a worse tyranny still ; when 
the tyrant follows you, not merely to your home, to 
the domestic circle, to the closet, but penetrates your 
own breast, and resides perpetually within your own 
bosom. And yet how certain is it that a pampered 
appetite, an ungovernable passion, does wield such a 
tyrannous sway over the soul ! Is it not the case — 
may we not say to such a one? — that Conscience, 
Duty, Sense of Eight, that in you which ought to rule 
your being, has been enervated and enfeebled, and 
bereft of all power to govern your conduct ? Have not 
a fierce democracy of lusts and passions driven con- 
science from its throne within your breast 1 Do you 
not feel that they, and not you, are the masters ? that 
when temptation comes in its strength, though you see 
what is right, you cannot do it — though you see what 



SPIRITUAL PROSPERITY. 



191 



is wrong, you cannot resist it ? Over your own thoughts 
and desires, your own will and working, is it not so 
that often you have no more command than the sea 
over its waters, or forest trees over their motions as 
they bend to the blast ] Place the strong temptation 
before you, and in the hour of base and craving oppor* 
tunity, you know that you will not, cannot choose but 
yield up your soul, to their command. Conscience may 
secretly warn you that it is ruin to yield, that you are 
offending the great God by yielding, that every time 
you yield you are inflicting a deep wound on your 
peace ; yet how often do you feel that you have intro- 
duced into your bosom a master mightier than con- 
science still ! In moments of remorse, your feeble will 
may rise up and irresolutely strive to regain its au- 
thority ; but it is speedily overborne again, and under 
the resistless lash of appetite you are driven on, and 
on, in sin. 

But there is another and more common state of 
mind, w T hich may not less truly be described as a 
slavery— an abandonment of self-rule in the soul. 
There are few, it may be, amongst us to whom the 
former description is appropriate ; but there are multi- 
tudes, the most cursory observation shows, who have 
abandoned the rule of their souls, if not to open profli- 
gacy, to a not less despotic principle of worldliness and 
spiritual indifference. Are there not many now hearing 
me, who feel that their case is — not that they do not 
know that their present course of life is wrong — but 
that they have no power of resolution to break off from 
it, and begin in good earnest the work of religion 1 It 



192 



SERMON VIII . 



is not that they are not aware of their danger, but that 
there is a dread paralysis upon their moral powers, a 
nightmare incapacity of resolute action, that will not 
let them flee. I am persuaded that I speak to the 
experience of not a few now present, when I say to 
them, You cannot resist the conviction that all is not 
right with your soul. You do not dare to assert that 
you are quite prepared for eternity — that you would 
not wish to be a different sort of person when death 
comes to you. You have occasionally been conscious 
of the feeling that you ought to bestir yourself, and 
think more than you do about religion. You have felt 
thus, for instance, when an intimate friend died at 
your own period of life ; or when you were seriously 
ill yourself ; or when some very earnest expostulation 
was addressed to you about your soul's state. The 
thought did force itself on your mind that you ought 
to be more serious, to repent, to break off from your 
careless ways, to set earnestly about the inquiry how 
your soul is to be saved. But still you do not repent ; 
you are not to-day a whit more serious than before. 
You have never, after all, taken any resolute step in 
the matter.^ You have let year after year slip by, and 
you are found still the same easy, worldly, careless man 
as ever. The world is too strong for you ; — you fear 
perhaps its ridicule you love its contented selfish- 
ness ; — you are its slave. And oh what a miserable 
bondage this ! What a tremendous arrest upon your 
powers ! what a mighty tyranny over your soul must 
that be, which, amid the awful mystery of a life like 
ours — coming from eternity, hasting to eternity again 



SPIRITUAL PROSPERITY, 



193 



— -can quell and stifle the great motives of religion ! 
Sad, sad indeed, may be the openly abandoned pro- 
fligate's condition ; but is it extravagant to say that 
there is more hope of him than of such dead, numb, 
torpid worldliness as this i It is sad to look on the 
havoc and destruction of some fair region where the 
hurricane has been raging ; but is there not something 
more sad, more appalling far, in the still, stern barren- 
ness of the desert, where perpetual silence and un- 
broken desolation reign ? 

Is there, then, amongst us, any one who has escaped 
from such bondage as this ? — he assuredly is prospering 
in spirit. Quickened by the secret energy of God's 
Spirit, has your will risen up, revolted from this 
ruinous thraldom, and, in the strength of a mightier 
than human power, cast it off for ever 1 Then, indeed, 
with you would we rejoice this day, and be exceeding 
glad. If the truth have made you free, you are free 
indeed. In the arms of Jesus you are safe for ever. 
No language, no emblems, can be found to convey any 
adequate idea of the blessedness of such a deliverance. 
Not the poor timid struggling bird springs forth from 
the snare with a note of more thrilling joyfulness — not 
the despairing heart- sick captive casts the first look of 
freedom on the bright heaven, or treads with bounding 
step the greensward of home with a more exultant throb 
of happiness, than this day may be yours. And never 
was that ancient song of deliverance sung with a deeper 
meaning than your lips may lend to it, " Our soul is 
escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler ; the 
snare is broken, and we are escaped." 

N 



194 



SERMON VIII. 



II. Such, then, are some of the elements of that 
inward or spiritual prosperity to which the apostle 
refers in the words, " even as thy soul prospereth." I 
would now point out briefly the reasons for which this 
soul-prosperity should be regarded in our desires as the 
standard or measure of outward prosperity. 

Why did the apostle wish for his friend — why should 
we in like manner wish for our friends, outward, tem- 
poral prosperity, only in the measure in which they 
already possess inward, spiritual prosperity 1 Is it a 
sentiment founded in reason — " I wish above all things 
that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy 
soul prospereth " 1 

That it is so will be apparent if you reflect, on the 
one hand, that, destitute of inward grace, it is neither 
for a maris own good, nor for that of his fellow-men 9 
that he should be possessed of outward wealth or 
power ; and, on the other hand, that if a man's soul 
be right with God, the possession of these outward 
advantages is both safe for himself and profitable for 
others. 

To look for a moment to the former view of the 
matter, can it be doubtful to any one, that wealth, 
power, prosperity, are no blessings where God's grace 
has not come before them 1 — that it is not good to be 
happy, if, first, we are not holy? Imagine — nay, you 
need not imagine it ; life teems with examples of men 
and women, surrounded with all its ease and comfort 
and outward happiness — it may be its gaiety and 
splendour — who are yet obviously and notoriously 
strangers to goodness and to grace. And do you need 



SPIRITUAL PROSPERITY. 



195 



to ask why such a state of matters, far from being 
desirable, is to be deprecated and deplored ? 

Is it fanciful to say, for one thing, that to a serious 
mind there is something singularly sad and affecting 
in the very contrast which such a spectacle presents 1 
The rich, gay, happy, outward life, and the dark moral 
antithesis within ! It is good to be gay, where the 
gaiety is real. But it is not good, it is not seemly, it 
is, sooth to say, the sorrowfullest thing under heaven, 
to be gay where there is every reason to be sad. Who 
loves not to listen to the merry ringing laugh of child- 
hood, for it is the utterance of a heart that is yet a 
stranger to care ? But have you not felt that there is 
something awful in the maniac's mirth — something 
that grates upon the mind's sense of reality, in the 
hollow merriment 

*" Of moody madness laughing wild, 
Amid severest woe" ? 

Eight pleasant, too, it is to behold the ruddy hue on 
the cheek, and the bright sparkle in the eye of health. 
But have you never felt that no sight is so truly 
melancholy as the unnatural brightness in the eye, or 
the glow that often gathers on consumption's cheek, 
the more beautiful as the end draweth near? And 
yet, sad though these contrasts are, there is something 
more truly pitiful, there is a more awful, because a 
moral sadness, in the sight which the minions of out- 
ward prosperity, of worldly comfort and happiness, not 
seldom present to a thoughtful observer's eye. Sur- 
veying the spectacle of the world-throng around us — 



196 



SERMON VIII. 



thoughtless, busy, careless, godless men and women, 
happy amid the empty din and joy of life, and yet 
remembering what is beneath all this, and whither, 
unless religion be one great He, all this is tending — have 
you never felt, in moments of seriousness, an impres- 
sion as if of something awful in this happiness of man ? 
Looking on an irreligious man's life, mindful how 
rapidly the stream of time is bearing him onward to 
the unseen, does there not force itself on the mind a 
sense of something horribly incongruous in all this 
gaiety, as were the mirth of men in a sinking ship, or 
wild shouts of laughter from some crew hurrying on- 
ward to the torrent's brink ! 

" Whom call we gay ? That honour has been long 
The boast of mere pretenders to the name. 
The innocent are gay." 

But oh, if God be true, if Christ be true, if heaven 
and hell be true, save us from the gaiety of such as 
these ! 

Again, as a second consideration, I need scarcely do 
more than simply express the thought, that outward 
prosperity is not desirable for a man's own sake, if un- 
accompanied by inward, because of the bad moral in- 
fluence which it has on his own character. Outward 
prosperity, unattended by inward, is not only an incon- 
gruous, but also a positively injurious thing. For an 
irreligious man, nothing is more to be deprecated than 
an uninterrupted flow of worldly good. It may look 
like the mere commonplace language of the pulpit, yet- 
universal experience proves it to be the language of 



SPIRITUAL PROSPERITY. 



197 



truth, to say that it is not good for any man, even the 
holiest and best of us, to be quite happy here, as to 
outward things. But where there is little or no strength 
of religious principle in the soul, an unbroken continu- 
ance of worldly happiness will almost infallibly exert 
a deteriorating influence on the character. Only in 
proportion as the dew of God's hidden grace is descend- 
ing on the heart, can it be safe for a man to be exposed 
to the hot sun of worldly prosperity; and if that secret 
element of strength and fertility be not continually 
supplied, the scorching heat must speedily wither up, 
in the spiritual soil, every green and beautiful thing. 

May I not appeal, on this point, to the experience 
of the people of God, of those who have ever attempted 
in good earnest to lead a holy life ? Have you not felt 
— may I not say to many such ? — how incessant is the 
tendency of even the innocent pleasures and possessions 
of life to draw off your heart from God and from divine 
things 1 Ease, comfort, social intercourse, the luxuries 
and enjoyments of a prosperous condition, have you 
not felt that these have a fatal, because a most stealthy 
and insidious power to hurt the soul 1 If you have 
been or are now surrounded by these things — nay, if 
even a share of worldly comfort by no means extra- 
ordinary has fallen to your lot — is it not so that only 
by the most unremitting watchfulness and prayer and 
secret self-discipline, can you be protected from their 
seductive influences 1 And as often as you have allowed 
yourself to intermit these secret exercises, has not your 
experience ever been, that gradually and imperceptibly 
conscience is deprived of its sensitiveness, love to God 



198 



SERMON VIII. 



and to Christ Jesus droops and languishes, and the 
strength of your renewed will, your powers of self- 
denial and of Christian activity, become enfeebled. 
Encompassed on all sides by the world's obtrusive, 
importunate pursuits and pleasure, only abandon your- 
self to them, only let them for ever so brief a period 
engross an undue share of your thoughts, and the in- 
evitable consequence will be that prayer, self-examina- 
tion, meditation on divine things, become irksome and 
distasteful, that the mind's jealousy of doubtful pleasures 
and equivocal acts of conformity to the world is relaxed, 
and that the whole tone of your spiritual life is lowered. 
There is, indeed, a mighty oblivion-power in the things 
of time and sense. Insignificant in themselves, their 
comparative nearness makes them seem great ; so that 
unless the far-seeing eye of faith be kept continually 
bright and clear, they speedily eclipse in our sight the 
things unseen and eternal, just as the light of the sun, 
though of greatly inferior intensity, hides from our > 
view by day the distant brightness of the stars. 

And if thus worldly prosperity, without a corre- 
sponding increase of spiritual strength, be dangerous 
even to the people of God, how much more so to others ! 
What must it be to be exposed to its baneful influences, 
with no strength of inward principle, no sustaining 
power of divine grace to counteract and resist them ? 
What, I ask, to bring it to the test of experience, is 
the effect upon any worldly man's mind, now present, 
of his increasing business, and growing wealth and 
influence and importance among his fellow-men ; what 
is the obvious result of all the stir and bustle of worldly 



SPIRITUAL PROSPERITY. 



199 



things around him, but to keep up the dream of folly 
and indifference in this life, and to confirm him in his 
insane heedlessness of what is beyond it ! How in- 
tensely selfish and worldly does such a man's heart 
become when there has been little for a long while to 
mar or interrupt his outward comfort and happiness ! 
His whole soul becomes of the earth, earthy. You 
cannot cross the threshold of his home without feeling 
how low and unspiritual is the atmosphere in which 
he breathes, how in the world and its good things his 
whole delight is placed. And every year, if you watch 
the process, you will perceive how the softness of a 
prosperous life is imbedding him more firmly in his 
selfish worldliness, like moss gathering round a motion- 
less stone. Would one who really desired this man's 
welfare wish for him a continuance or increase of 
worldly good ? "Would not his truest friend rather 
long and pray that his fatal tranquillity might be inter- 
rupted — that, if need be, poverty, sickness, bereave- 
ment itself might invade his home — anything, any 
affliction, however sharp and sudden, by which this 
hollow peace, this ruinous security, might be broken up 1 
But I have said that it is not only for a man's own 
good, but also for the good of others, that he should 
prosper outwardly only in the measure in which his 
soul prospejeth. " Beloved, I wish that thou wouldst 
prosper even as thy soul prospereth," is the apostle's 
wish ; and to this we would add this other comment, 
"for if thy soul prospereth, if thy heart be right with 
God, then the world will get the good of whatever 
outward prosperity, whatever wealth or power or influ- 



200 



SERMON VIIL 



ence, God is pleased to send thee." For, obviously, 
wealth, power, influence, all outward advantages, are 
just so many means of doing good or evil put into a 
man's hands ; and whether such advantages shall be 
for the benefit or injury of mankind, depends on the 
inward character of him to whom they are intrusted. 
Mankind are losers when a selfish man prospers ; they 
are gainers by the prosperity of the generous and 
liberal-minded. The latter receive the blessings of 
God's providence as the sun receives light, to brighten 
and gladden the world, or as the healthy plant the 
influences of nature, to scatter them abroad in fertility 
and fragrance again. The former, on the contrary, 
like an excrescence on the fruit-tree absorbing the 
moisture that might have gone to produce leaves and 
fruit, receive any blessing at God's hand only to retain 
or abuse it ; or, like a rank weed, draw in the genial 
influences of the soil and atmosphere of life, only to 
poison all the air around them. But if this be so, well 
may we desire, for the world's sake, that those may 
prosper and be in health whose souls are prospering. 
For this is indeed but another form of expressing the 
wish, that they who have the desire and inclination to 
do good may also have the power. Are there those 
amongst us who have learned the secret of unselfish 
love, where alone it is to be truly learned, at the Cross 
of Jesus ? Beholding the glory of Him whose very 
name is Love in the face of Him whose whole life was 
but one living and breathing utterance of love, and 
whose death was the triumph of pure, unmingled, self- 
devoted love, are they becoming more and more con- 



SPIRITUAL PROSPERITY. 



201 



formed in spirit to the object of their adoration ? In 
one word, believers as they profess to be in Him who 
pleased not Himself, are there those now hearing me 
who are longing and aspiring daily after a more gentle, 
holy, compassionate, Christ-like spirit % — then, indeed, 
on their behalf may all men unite in uttering the 
aspiration of the text. They "seek not their own." 
They " look not on their own things, but on the things 
of others." They are ever ready to " bear the burdens" 
of others, that they may "fulfil the law of Christ." 
They are God's agents in scattering His bounty over 
the world. They consecrate their wealth, power, influ- 
ence to God's glory and the world's good. Prosperity 
descends upon them like rain upon a river, that they 
may diffuse its blessings wherever they go. Who then 
will refuse on behalf of such to echo the prayer, " We 
wish above all things that ye would prosper and be in 
health, even as your souls prosper " 1 

And now, my friends, let me only ask in conclusion, 
can we utter such a wish as that of the text on your 
behalf? Can we desire for all, for many now present, 
that they may prosper outwardly as their souls are 
prospering ? Alas ! in the case of how many must it 
be confessed that such a wish would be an imprecation 
instead of a prayer, a covert invocation, not of blessings 
but of curses on their heads. For only think what 
would be the effect, if to each one in this assembly it 
should indeed be granted to prosper just as his soul is 
prospering — to be in body and in outward condition, in 
health, wealth, fortune, just as he is inwardly in the 



202 



SERMON VIII. 



sight of God. How few would be outwardly bettered 
— on bow many would tbe outward change be sad and 
shocking to behold ! Let the body be as the soul is, 
and how many, who are now seen in youth and health 
and comeliness of aspect, would instantly assume the 
withered and wasted look of age and disease ! how 
many would become forms and shapes from which the 
eye with instinctive disgust would turn away ! Or let 
it be granted that every one in this house shall become 
in wealth and worldly condition just what he is in 
soul ; and alas ! are there not more than one or two, 
comfortable, easy, luxurious, in outward circumstances 
now, whom such a law would render bankrupt in body 
as they already are in soul, who would leave this house 
poorer than the poorest wretch that shrinks to-night 
into poverty's squalidest den ? Ask yourself, each one 
who now hears me, " Am I such as this ? If my body 
were made like my soul, would I become diseased and 
impoverished, if now rich or strong ; or if poor or feeble, 
more wasted and poverty- struck still?" In plain 
terms, let me ask, Have you any ground to think that 
your soul is prospering? Have you any evidence 
that it has ever even begun to be well with your soul ? 
Can you honestly say that you have any love to 
Christ in your heart? Are you making any real 
effort to drive sin out of your soul? Is your daily 
life governed by inclination or by duty — by the de- 
sire to please God, or by the reckless determination, 
at all hazards, to please self ? You know what it is to 
be made happy by outward prosperity, or sorry by out- 
ward adversity — to be grieved or gladdened by worldly 



SPIRITUAL PROSPERITY. 



203 



gain or loss : Have you any such definite consciousness 
of joy or sorrow about your soul's progress or declen- 
sion 1 You have felt real pain many a time, for in- 
stance, for the loss of money, or of some place or project 
on which you had set your heart : Have you ever felt 
any such undeniable pain for sin ? Do you remember 
any time in your past life when sin cost you real trouble 
and sorrow of heart, when you were distressed to have 
been betrayed into it yourself, or grieved to behold it 
in others] As a man is eager to retrieve his loss 
when he discovers himself to have fallen behind in 
his worldly circumstances, are you conscious of having 
ever made any real, resolute effort, of having been at 
pains to set your soul right with God, to get the better 
of worldly or unholy desires and habits in your inward 
character ] As you would rejoice at success in the one 
case, so if you have really succeeded in the other, if 
your soul has been reconciled to the Father of spirits, 
if you discern in it the marks of a progressive meetness 
for heaven, you cannot fail to have experienced some 
delight at the discovery. Are you conscious of this ? 
Or if you have been conscious of no spiritual progress, 
of no advancement in holiness to give you this joy in 
time past, would it rejoice you to get it now ] If you had 
your choice to-day of poverty with Christ, or riches and 
all worldly comfort and happiness without Him, which 
would you choose 1 What you most value yourself, you 
will most desire for your children or your friends. Ask 
your heart, and let it honestly reply, whether it would 
give you more pleasure to see your family and friends 
get on well in the world, get good places, grow rich 



204 



SERMON VIII. 



and honoured of men, or to see them grow up good, 
holy, pious-minded men and women ? It grieves us, 
my dear friends, to think w^hat kind of answer many, 
many must make, if they speak sincerely, to such 
inquiries as these. And if it be with you, as we fear 
it is, surely never could a Christian friend address 
you in the language of the text. Godless, Christless, 
utterly unhappy in spirit, your worst enemy could not 
utter a more malignant wish than that you should 
prosper and be in health just as your soul is prospering. 
And destitute as you are of true love to Christ and to 
your fellow-men, to wish you outward prosperity, de- 
spite of your soul's state, would be a wish even more 
inconsistent still with your best welfare and theirs. 
You have never shown any disposition to serve God, 
or promote your brother's good with the means you 
possess ; and to wish you more wealth or influence, 
would only be to desire for you increase of responsibility 
and increase of guilt. You, whom God has already 
blessed with health, or wealth, or influence, which you 
have consumed on self, or spent on sin, could the best 
friend you have on earth wish you more of these ? As 
soon wish that fuel may be added to the raging fire, or 
fresh lading to the sinking ship ; — as soon wish that 
treasures of gold may be cast into the sea, as into the 
cold, thankless, all-engulfing selfishness of the spirit 
within you ! 



SERMON IX. 



THE CHRISTIAN'S HERITAGE. 

" All things are yours ; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, 
or life, or death, or things present, or things to come ; all are yours ; 
and ye are Christ's ; and Christ is God's."— 1 Cor. iii. 21, 22, 23. 

The unloveliness of envy, jealousy, pride, and the 
kindred vices which spring from the common root of 
selfishness, is never so apparent as when these vices 
manifest themselves amongst those who bear the 
Christian name. Yet the history of the Church but 
too often exhibits the strange anomaly of a religion of 
love producing the keenest haters, and a gospel of peace 
engendering strifes and animosities more bitter than 
the disputes and rivalries of the profane. It is a very 
early manifestation of this unhallowed spirit on which 
St Paul animadverts in the passage before us. The 
Christians at Corinth had quarrelled with each other 
on the merits of their respective teachers — each party 
boasting of the pre-eminent wisdom or eloquence of its 
own head, and contemning the gifts of his supposed 
rivals. The apostle rebukes this unholy strife, charac- 



206 



SERMON IX. 



terising it as not only unlovely, but, among Christians, 
singularly foolish and irrational. And the thought by 
which he enforces this representation is a very striking 
one. Keligious rivalries and competitions involve, he 
alleges, not only a sin, but an absurdity, inasmuch as 
it is the peculiar property of that which is the object 
of contention that it is not lost to any one man by 
another's gain. Each man's share of the divine treasure 
is not diminished, but rather increased, by reason of 
the multitude of participants. The prize gained by one 
earnest runner in the Christian race is not therefore 
lost, but rather rendered doubly secure and precious to 
the other competitors. In the pursuit of wealth it may 
be natural, however culpable, to begrudge another his 
gains, or to be elated at our own ; for wealth is a limited 
good. Your money cannot be yours and mine at the 
same time ; what you gain I may lose ; it is possible 
for you to be enriched at my expense. Neither, again, 
is it irrational, though it may be sinful, to contend 
with others for power, rank, social greatness ; for the 
very ideas of power, rank, greatness, imply their oppo- 
sites — subjection, lowliness, inferiority. That one man 
attains to .place or power, implies that others miss or 
lose it ; the successful man rises, not seldom, on the 
ruin of his rivals. But with respect to spiritual good 
— the gains and advantages of religion — it is altogether 
different. These belong to that class of blessings which 
possess the qualities of universality and inexhaustible- 
ness. The light of the sun is not the less bright to 
me that it beams at the same moment on millions of 
my fellow-men. The beauty which I behold in earth 



THE CHRISTIAN'S HERITAGE. 



207 



and sea and skies is not diminished to me because of 
the multitude of spectators who may share in my 
delight. A thing of beauty is not only a "joy for 
ever," but a universal joy. Of a thousand men who 
may behold the same landscape, each may be said to 
possess all its beauty. In like manner those blessings 
which constitute the Christian's portion — Truth, Love, 
Beauty, Goodness- — may become the common possession 
of myriads, each one of whom may yet be said to possess 
the whole. The same truths which fill my mind may 
become the spiritual nutriment of all my fellow- 
believers, undiminished to me though other minds 
apprehend them. The love to Christ which burns in 
one Christian's breast, does not become enfeebled if 
other hearts catch the flame from his, but rather, by 
contact of congenial elements, glows in each separate 
heart with a fervour all the more intense. The peace 
of God may be diffused through the spirits of a multi- 
tude which no man can number, and yet each redeemed 
soul may say of it, "It is all my own" — nay, better 
than if all or exclusively his own ; for it is a peace, a 
joy, a happiness, which, by the electric flash of sympathy 
passing from heart to heart, becomes, by reason of the 
multitudes who share it, redoubled, multiplied, bound- 
lessly increased to each. Let no man, therefore, in 
spiritual things, glory in his own or envy another's 
good ; for to every individual member of Christ's church 
it may be said, " Whatever others have obtained, still 
the whole, the illimitable all of Truth and Love and 
Joy, is left for you." "All things are yours ; whether 
Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or 



208 



SERMON IX. 



death, or things present, or things to come ; all are 
yours." 

I shall endeavour to illustrate this statement of 
the apostle, "All things are yours," first by a. general 
argument, and then by passing in review one or two of 
those special blessings which are enumerated in this 
catalogue of the Christian's possessions. 

I. It may help to explain the universal proprietor- 
ship here ascribed to Christians, if you consider that 
the believer may be said to possess all things in God. 

The mind of a great author is more precious than 
his books, the genius of a great artist than the most 
exquisite productions of his hand ; and if it were at 
our option to possess all the works of the greatest 
mind, or to be ourselves endowed with a portion of 
that intellectual power from which they emanated, who 
would hesitate in his choice 1 ? To have the mind is 
better than to have merely the products of that mind. 
Give the fountain, and you virtually have the streams 
— the creative origin, and you possess that which is 
better than any special manifestation of its power. 
But no earthly or finite mind can transfer its gifts to 
another ; the superior nature can never make over a 
share of its inner intellectual or moral power as a 
dowry to the inferior. Yet this transfusion of minds, 
inconceivable between finite and created beings, is 
not inconceivable between the created mind and God. 
There is a sense in which we may become sharers of 
that Mind from which all that is true and good and 
fair in the universe proceeds. It is given to us not 



THE CHRISTIAN'S HERITAGE. 209 

only to see, admire, and share in the works of the 
Great Author of all, but to become endowed with the 
very mind, imbued in our inmost being, with the very 
Spirit and Being of God. It is a thought which lies 
at the foundation of all true religion, that God Himself 
is the supreme Good, the true and real portion of the 
soul. As there is an affinity between the Intellect and 
Truth, between the Imagination and Beauty, between 
the Conscience and Goodness, so there is a deep and 
ineffable harmony between the whole spiritual nature 
of man and that Infinite Being in whom is all Truth, 
all Goodness, all Beauty. So that as really as true, or 
noble, or holy thoughts pass into and become a por- 
tion of the mind which apprehends them, does God 
communicate Himself, diffuse His own divine Spirit 
through the spirit of the believer. More intimately 
than light becomes the possession of the eye on which 
it streams, or air of the organs of breathing that inhale 
it, or the food we eat, assimilated and diffused through 
the physical system, incorporates itself with the nature 
of him who partakes of it, does He, that Infinite One, 
the Light of all our seeing, the Bread of Life, the 
nutriment of our highest being, become the deep 
inward portion of each soul that loves Him. The 
happiness of this mysterious nature of ours is never to 
be found merely in the possession of God's gifts, the 
works of His hand, or the bounties of His providence. 
The soul can find its true satisfaction only in rising 
beyond the gifts, and claiming the Giver as its own. 
When you covet the friendship or love of a fellow- 
man, it does not satisfy you that he bestows upon you 



210 



SERMON IX. 



only outward gifts — "his money, his property, his books 
— what cares a loving, longing heart for these ? Unless 
the man give you something more than these, give you 
himself, and become yours by the bond of deepest 
sympathy and affection, the rest are but worthless 
boons. So is it in the soul's relations with God. That 
after which, as by a mysterious and inborn affinity, 
every devout spirit yearns, is not God's gifts and boun- 
ties, but Himself. The wealth of worlds would be, to 
the heart longing after Deity, a miserable substitute 
for one look of love from the Great Father's eye. " My 
soul thirsteth for God," is the language in which 
Scripture gives expression to this deep want of our 
nature, and points to the ineffable satisfaction provided 
for it, — "My soul thirsteth for God, for the living 
God." — " As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, 
so panteth my soul after Thee, 0 God!" — "If any 
man love Me, My Father will love him, and We will 
come unto him, and take up Our abode w r ith him." — 
" I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made 
perfect in one." 

Now, admitting the truth of this thought, that in 
some way, however mysterious or incapable of being 
fully expressed in words, God is Himself the immediate 
possession or portion of the soul, then the argument of 
the text becomes an obvious and conclusive one. As 
the scattered rays of light are all included in the focus, 
as the fountain contains the streams, as the object 
reflected is prior to and nobler than the different 
reflections of it — so all finite and created good is con- 
tained in Him who is the Supreme Good ; all earthly 



THE CHRISTIAN'S HERITAGE. 



211 



excellence is but the partial emanation, the more or 
less bright reflection of the Great Original. To have 
a portion, therefore, in God, is to possess that which 
includes in itself all created good. The man who is in 
possession of some great masterpiece in painting or 
sculpture, need not envy others who have only casts or 
copies of it. The original plate or stereotype is more 
valuable than any impressions or engravings thrown off 
from it ; and he who owns the former, owns that which 
includes, is capable of producing, all the latter. So, if 
it be given to any human spirit to know and enjoy 
God, to be admitted to the fellowship, and have a por- 
tion in the very being of the Infinite, then is that 
spirit possessor of that whereof " Paul, Apollos, Ce- 
phas," " the World " — all material and all mental 
excellence, is but the faint copy, the weak and blurred 
transcript. Surveying the wonders of creation, or even 
with the Word of inspiration in his hand, the Christian 
can say, "Glorious though these things be, to me 
belongs that which is more glorious far. The streams 
are precious, but I have the Fountain ; the vesture is 
beautiful, but the Wearer is mine ; the portrait in its 
every lineament is lovely, but that Great Original whose 
beauty it but feebly depicts, is my own. ' God is my 
portion, the Lord is mine inheritance.' To me belongs 
all actual and all possible good, all created and un- 
created beauty, all that eye hath seen or imagination 
conceived ; and more than that, for ' eye hath not seen, 
nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of 
man to conceive what God hath prepared for them that 
love Him,' — all things and beings, all that life reveals 



212 



SERMON IX. 



or death, conceals, everything within the boundless 
possibilities of creating wisdom and power, is mine ; 
for God, the Creator and Fountain of all, is mine." 

II. Passing from this general view of the subject, 
I shall now endeavour to illustrate the assertion, " All 
things are yours," by adverting to one or two of the 
special blessings here enumerated, as constituting parts 
of the Christian's universal inheritance. I shall take, 
as specimens, these three, — "The World," "Life," 
" Death." 

1. In what sense, then, to take the first of these, 
may the Christian understand the announcement — 
" The World is yours " i Not, obviously, in the literal 
sense of the words. This earth is not the exclusive 
property of the good. Christians are not, of necessity, 
lords of its soil or possessors of its wealth. It was not 
their Master, but another, who, displaying "all the 
kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them," said, 
" All these will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and 
worship me." As often as otherwise, the rich in faith 
are poor in this world's possessions. Many a one, " of 
whom the world was not worthy," never owned a 
hand's-breadth of its soil, till he possessed that which 
to the veriest wretch is not denied — a grave. Of the 
purest, noblest, best of the sons of men, it is written, 
that often " He had not where to lay His head ; " and 
even that last resting-place to which His marred and 
bleeding form was borne, the hand of charity bestowed. 
No ! not literally can it be said to Christ's followers on 
earth, "The world is yours." 



THE CHRISTIAN'S HERITAGE. 



213 



But if not literally, yet in this sense may the world 
be said to belong to the Christian, that he only has a 
legitimate title to the benefits and blessings He enjoys 
in it. This earth was not meant to be the home of 
evil. The make and structure of the world is for good. 
Nothing in it, save by abuse, has any affinity with sin. 
Its foundations were not laid of old by Omnipotence, 
nor its wondrous laws contrived and ordered by Infinite 
Wisdom, nor its garniture of beauty spread over it by 
the loving hand of God, only that a luxurious home 
might be provided for selfishness and impurity. God's 
sun was not created to shine, nor His rain to fall, nor 
His seasons made in orderly course to return, and all 
the processes contrived by which Nature yields up her 
annual abundance, only that it might be poured into 
the lap of folly, and prolong the existence of ingratitude 
and vice. Even mute and material things, the laws 
and agencies of nature, have in them something that 
asserts their divine origin, and proclaims that wrong 
is done to them — that they are in an unnatural and 
distorted condition — when forced into the service of 
sin. How exquisite, for instance, is that mechanism 
which we are at this moment employing, by which 
thought embodied in articulate sounds goes forth upon 
the viewless air, and by its invisible agency is conveyed 
from the preacher's lip to the ears, and so to the 
minds, of his auditory ! What mechanism contrived 
by human art can compare with God's mechanism of 
speech and sound 1 And when this wondrous engine 
is compelled to carry hither and thither words of 
selfishness, and malice, and unkindness — when it is 



214 



SERMON IX. 



laden with the swearer's oath or the slanderer's lie — 
when it is forced to hurry on, burdened with impurities 
and blasphemies — is it employed for its destined end, 
is it rightfully used, or not rather fearfully perverted 
and abused 1 Or, again, that agency of light, the mode 
of whose operation is still, with all its unvarying beauty 
and simplicity, an unsolved problem to human science 
— is it employed legitimately, and in accordance with 
the ends for which it was contrived, when on its tremu- 
lous ether, or its luminous waves, it is constrained to 
carry to and fro angry looks, lascivious glances, reflected 
sights and scenes of impurity and evil ? It were blas- 
phemy to suppose that the Almighty should send down 
angels to convey hither and thither messages of impur- 
ity, or to lend their potent aid to deeds of crime ; yet 
are not "the winds God's messengers — the naming fire 
His ministers," — as truly as "the angels that do His 
commandments, hearkening to the voice of His word " 1 
And as with these, so with all the other powers and 
agents which constitute the material system around us ; 
are they not all obviously designed to harmonise with, 
and subserve, the higher moral order of God's world ? 
If, therefore, you are living a godless and sinful life, 
you are out of harmony with the world in which you 
live. You exist in it by sufferance, not by right, — an 
intruder on its soil, a misappropriator of its benefits, 
a usurper and perverter of its laws. Nature and her 
laws and agencies do not serve you willingly, but as 
the captive servants of a gracious master, compelled 
to do the bidding of his enemy, only because "for a 
season " they have been " subjected to the bondage of 



THE CHRISTIAN'S HERITAGE. 



215 



corruption." And so long as you continue in estrange- 
ment from God, it is as if His sun were unwilling to 
shine upon you, and His air to inspire you, and the 
fruits of His earth to nourish you, and that earth itself 
to hold you, and as if " the whole creation," weary of 
a bondage so degrading, were, according to the magni- 
ficent conception of the apostle, "groaning and travail- 
ing in pain." 

On the other hand, return to God, let your soul be 
brought back into living union with the Father of 
spirits through His dear Son, and thenceforward the 
world will become yours, because you are God's. In 
harmony with the Great Centre, you will be in har- 
mony with all things in His universe. Nature will 
serve him who serves her God; and all her varied 
powers and agencies will rejoice to obey the behests 
and minister to the welfare of one who is the loved 
and loving child of their great Master and Lord. The 
earth will be fulfilling its proper function in yielding 
you bread, and the heavens in shedding their sweet 
influences on your path. For you the morning will 
dawn and the evening descend. For you "the winds 
will blow, earth rest, heavens move, and fountains flow." 
You will be able to claim a peculiar property in the 
works of your Father's hand, and the bounties of your 
Father's providence. You will have served yourself 
heir to Him who is the Universal Proprietor, and 
become "heir of God, and joint heir with Christ." 
And so "the world" and the fulness thereof will 
become " yours," because " ye are Christ's, and Christ 
is God's." 



216 



SERMON IX. 



2. Another of the blessings comprehended in this 
roll of the Christian's possessions is "Life." What, 
then, let us ask, is the import of the declaration, " Life 
is yours " 1 It is obvious that in the simplest view of 
it, considered as mere existence or duration of being, 
"life" cannot, any more than the former blessing, be 
regarded as the peculiar property of the Christian. 
For though it is true that religion, by reason of the 
moral habits which it inculcates, is really conducive 
to health and longevity, and that, in absence of its 
restraints, vicious excess often impairs the health and 
shortens life, yet this is by no means so uniformly its 
result as to warrant, in the literal import of the words, 
the assertion of the text. It is not always the holiest 
men who live the longest. Oftentimes " the good die 
first, whilst they whose hearts are dry as summer's 
dust burn to the socket." There is something more 
than mere sentimentality in the saying not seldom 
heard from sorrowing lips concerning the dead, that 
they were " too good for this world "-. — " they grew so 
holy, so gentle, so good," is the thought implied — 
"they breathed so much of the spirit of heaven upon 
earth, that, long ere to human eye their course was 
run, the Father called them home." And perhaps 
there are few of us who, as life wears on, do not learn 
to cherish among our deepest and most sacred recol- 
lections the memory of some loved and sainted one, 
some child, or brother, or sister departed, whose fair 
young face shines out to us, in thoughtful moments, 
from amidst the dim and vanished years, as that of one 
whom God hath early taken. JSTo ! we repeat, not 



THE CHRISTIAN'S HERITAGE. 



217 



literally can they who are Christ's understand the pro- 
mise, " Life is yours." 

But there is a sense most real and true in which 
they may apprehend it. For if the good do not live 
longer, they live more in the same space of time than 
other men. Life is to be reckoned not only extensively, 
but also intensively; not merely by the number of its 
days, but also by the amount of thought and energy 
which we infuse into them. Existence is not to be 
measured by mere duration. An oak lives for centuries, 
generation after generation of mortals the meanwhile 
passing away; but who would exchange for the life of 
a plant, though protracted for ages, a single day of the 
existence of a living, conscious, thinking man ? The 
briefest life of rationality, again, is worth more, has 
more of real life in it, than the longest of a mere 
animal. And, amongst rational beings, that life is 
longest, whether brief or protracted its outward term, 
into which the largest amount of mind, of mental and 
moral activity, is condensed. It is possible for the 
longest life to be really briefer than the shortest, and 
the child or youth may die older, with more of life 
crowded into his brief existence, than he whose dull 
and stagnant being drags on to an inglorious old age. 

" We live in deeds, not years ; in thoughts, not breaths ; 
In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives 
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best." 

But if it be so, surely, estimating life by this principle, 
it is only the Christian, the man who lives to God, who 
can really be said to live at all. For in him alone the 



218 



SERMON IX. 



whole man lives — in him alone all the energies of 
man's being, physical, intellectual, moral, are called 
into fullest, noblest activity. In sleep we possess mere 
existence as truly as in waking, but in so far as our 
nobler conscious being is concerned, sleep steals away 
a great part of our earthly life : and if instead of a 
part, a man were compelled to spend the whole of life 
in sleep, then as a conscious, reflective, active being, 
life would be utterly lost to him. But there are men 
not a few in whose busy outward life, though the intel- 
lect may wake, the spirit slumbers, and who, amidst all 
the surface vivacity of a worldly and selfish existence, 
know as little of truest, noblest life, as if their years 
were spent in torpid unconsciousness. The man who 
merely vegetates through existence, who rises day by 
day only to eat and drink and pursue the same unre- 
flective round of business and pleasure, without one 
lofty thought or pure spiritual emotion, never for one 
moment lifting his soul to commune with God, and the 
vast world of invisible realities around him, — surely, to 
such a one, life, in its real essence, its true significance, 
is lost. And comparing such a life with that of the 
man in whom the pulse of being beats quick — the 
reflective, earnest, high-souled man, alive to the noblest 
end of existence, governed by high principles and holy 
motives, crowding his days with deeds, and leaving 
scarce one hour of waking existence that is not instinct 
with energy, throbbing with the life's-blood of the 
spirit, — comparing the former sort of life with this, can 
we hesitate to pronounce that that is a mere blank, a 
life that is no life, a death in life, whilst this alone 



THE CHRISTIAN'S HERITAGE. 



219 



deserves the name ? The man of property who has 
an undiscovered gold-mine on his estate, is no richer 
for his latent wealth, and cannot be said really to 
possess it. And so, whatever other men contrive to 
extract out of life — as comfort, ease, honour, know- 
ledge, power — they are, after all, possessors only of its 
surface wealth ; the Christian alone, the man who has 
discovered and appropriated its hidden treasure of holy 
thought, feeling, energy, who has pierced down through 
life's common strata, and reached the divine element 
in it — he alone can be said to be its true possessor. 
Confine a bird for life to a cage, and could it be said to 
be in reality possessor of the unexercised, unen joyed 
power to soar and sweep the heavens 1 But within 
every human breast there are capabilities of heaven, 
folded wings of thought, aspiration, energy, which need 
only the liberating touch of the Spirit of God to call 
forth their hidden power, and bear the soul upward to 
the true region of its life. The true ideal of man's life 
is that of a heavenly life, a "life hid with Christ in 
God," — the life of one whose "conversation is in 
heaven," who is a risen with Christ, and made to dwell 
with Him in heavenly places," and who, even amidst 
the common duties of the world, derives his motives 
and principles from a nobler sphere of being. But the 
multitudes who never, in thought, desire, affection, 
emerge beyond the region of earthly things — such men 
know not what life is, have never discovered what, in 
its high and glorious reality, a human existence may 
become. To that man only who can say with the 
apostle, " To me to live is Christ," can we make answer 



220 



SERMON IX. 



in the full significance of the words, Then "life is 
yours." 

3. And if so, then finally may we add with the in- 
spired writer in the text, "Death/' too, "is yours. 5> 
Outwardly, indeed, death bears the same aspect to all. 
He comes in no gentler form, with no more obsequious 
mien, to those who are Christ's than to those who are 
none of His. But yet, whilst of all other men it may 
be said that they are death's, of the believer alone can 
it be averred that death is his. Sin, unrepented and 
unforgiven, renders a man, in a sense, the rightful 
property of death, so that, when the hour of dissolution 
arrives, it is but the lawful proprietor coming to claim 
his own. In human society, a man forfeits by the 
commission of a crime his right to liberty. His person, 
by right, if not in fact, is the property of the law ; and 
wherever he can be found, the emissary of justice may 
lay hold of the offender, and claim him as his own. 
The crime may be concealed, or the criminal may elude 
for a while the hands of justice ; but, go where he 
may, he has no right to liberty or life — he is at the 
mercy of the offended law, wherever he can be detected. 
And when at last, it may be in some unwary moment, 
and after long- continued impunity has lulled him into 
forgetfulness of the past, he feels a stern hand laid 
upon his shoulder, and the terrible words, " You are 
my prisoner," fall upon his ear, — what sense of weak- 
ness and helplessness sinks heavily on his spirit ! His 
guilty freedom is at an end. His game is up. A 
mighty power of human law and social order environs 
him. Eesistance he knows to be unavailing; and 



THE CHRISTIAN'S HERITAGE. 



221 



though, shrinking in dismay from the fate that awaits 
him, go he must with the officer of justice to meet it. 

Now, similar to this is the condition of the irreligious 
and impenitent man in relation to that law which he 
has dishonoured, and that dread penalty which he has 
incurred. Unrepented sin is Death's pledge. However 
long Death may delay, he will come — soon at the 
latest — to put in force the right he has established over 
the person of the sinner, and to claim him as his own. 
Every day that dawns, every passing hour, every throb 
of the pulse, is bringing him nearer. Every sickness, 
every sorrow, every sign of nature's decay, each secret 
pang of conscience, or momentary foreboding, that 
visits the sinner's soul, is as the shadow of the emissary 
of Heaven's justice falling athwart his victim's onward 
path. And then, when at last he comes, often most 
silently and suddenly — cold, stern, rigid, inexorable, 
God's awful messenger — there is that within the guilty 
breast which at once recognises his identity, and makes 
the man feel that resistance or escape is impossible. 
Then indeed is the hour and power of death, then the 
season of his long-delayed triumph, and of the appro- 
priation of his rightful property. A power, mightier 
than the combined force of human law and social 
order and public opinion, lays hold of the guilty soul, 
prevents its escape, hurries it resistlessly away to the 
bar of its Judge. Oh, who can tell what dreary sense 
of weakness visits the heart in that awful moment — 
what mysterious consciousness of being borne helplessly 
onward from the old, friendly, familiar world, into the 
strange portentous dark of Eternity ! Who can enter 



222 



SERMON IX. 



into that feeling of amazed, awestruck impotence and 
abandonment with which the soul realises the thought : 
" This is death at last, and ah me, I am his ! " 

On the other hand, if you are Christ's, then death 
is yours. His power over you is gone. He has no 
right to detain you in his possession. In his hands 
you shall no more he the weak, but the strong ; for 
your condition will be analogous to that, not of the 
criminal, but of the innocent, unjustly apprehended 
man, in the hands of the law. Over the innocent man 
the law has no power. All its authority, its sanctions, 
its penalties, are on his side. Its retributive inflictions 
cannot touch him ; they may not injure one hair of his 
head. He is no longer theirs, but they are his. If 
wrongfully accused and imprisoned, he can demand as 
a right all the aids and appliances of justice to free his 
character from stain, and his person from unrighteous 
restraint. Or if he himself be incapacitated from action, 
his friends, if they can establish his innocence, may 
demand his person at the hands of the law — may insist 
on his instant liberation. And so, if "ye are Christ's," 
if, reconciled to God through His dear Son, the stain 
of guilt no longer rests upon you ; then has death no 
longer any claim to your person, any right to retain you 
in his hold. It may be still your mysterious fate to 
submit for a little while to the universal penalty, to 
pass into the prison-house of the destroyer ; but He 
to whom, body and soul, you truly belong, will soon 
claim you as one who, like Himself, cannot be " holden 
of death/' and who must, at His summons, be set free. 
Not one soul dear to Christ will He permit to remain 



THE CHRISTIAN'S HERITAGE. 



223 



as death's prisoner, or to receive any injury at death's 
hands. Nay, the very dust of Christ's saints is dear 
to Him. He guards their very graves with a deeper 
and tenderer care than that wherewith earthly affection 
watches over the spot where a loved one rests. And 
as the slightest memorial of one who has been taken 
from us is often prized and kept with fondest interest, 
so even the frail vesture with which the soul of one of 
Christ's redeemed was once clothed, is precious to His 
heart, and He will rescue it at last from the dust where 
it lies soiled and dishonoured. "Neither death nor 
life, nor principalities nor powers, nor things present 
nor things to come" — no created power, no lapse of 
time, no material change or revolution — can remove 
you from the sight, or separate you from the omnipo- 
tent love of Jesus. At His omnitlc word, death and 
the grave shall one day yield up their unlawful captives ; 
and then, when the grave has heard the voice of the 
Son of God, and death, His servant and yours, has 
delivered up, unscathed, unharmed — yea, more glorious 
and beautiful than when they fell for a while into his 
charge — the bodies of Christ's redeemed, when "this 
corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal 
shall put on immortality," then shall the believer dis- 
cover the full and blessed import of the words, " Death 
is yours." 

Be this, then, let me say in conclusion, your comfort 
and strength amidst the passing hours of life, and when 
anticipating its inevitable close. If ye are Christ's in 
earnest heartfelt self-devotion, in the entire surrender 
of yourselves to Him who hath redeemed you by His 



224 



SERMON IX. 



precious blood, then indeed " death is yours." It may 
not be that, when he draws near to you, Death shall 
be welcomed with rapture, or even regarded without 
shrinking and dread. At the best, his is never a sweet 
face, nor is it a sound to which mortal ear can listen 
calmly when his step is heard on the threshold, or his 
knock strikes the door. But if you are Christ's, there 
is that in your condition which may well mitigate the 
fear, as it will ultimately triumph over the power of 
death. Death comes at Christ's command to call the 
believer to Himself ; and grim and ghastly though be 
the look of the messenger, surely that may well be 
forgotten in the sweetness of the message he brings. 
Death comes to set the spirit free ; and rude though 
be the hand that knocks off the fetters, and painful 
though be the process of liberation, what need the 
prisoner care for that, when it is to freedom, life, home, 
he is about to be emancipated? Death strikes the 
hour of the soul's everlasting espousals, and though 
the sound may be a harsh one, what matters that? 
To common ear it may seem a death-knell, to the ear 
of faith it is a bridal peal. " Now," may the fainting 
passing soul reflect, "now my Lord is coming, I go to 
meet Him — to be with Jesus — to dwell with Him in 
everlasting light and love — to be severed from Him no 
more for ever: 0 Death, lead thou me on!" Or, if 
frail nature should faint and fail in that awful hour, 
surely this may be its strong consolation, the thought 
that even in the article of dissolution, He to whom 
the soul belongs is near and close beside it, to sustain 
the fortitude of His servant, and shield him in the last 



THE CHRISTIAN'S HERITAGE. 



225 



alarms. " The night falls dark upon my spirit ; I 
tremble to go forth into that awful mystery and gloom : 
help, Lord, for my spirit faileth," — is this the cry of 
its passing anguish? "Fear not/' will be the sweet 
response that falls upon the inner ear — " Fear not, I 
am with thee; the night is far spent, the day is at 
hand ; a little moment, and the shadows shall flee 
away for ever!' 0 "0 Death!" may not then the 
dying saint, rising into the magnanimity of his glorious 
faith, exclaim— "0 Death, I fear thee not; I am not 
thine, but thou art mine ! Thanks be to God that 
giveth me the victory through Jesus Christ my Lord ! " 



SERMON X. 



THE SIMPLICITY OF CHRISTIAN RITUAL. 

"Then verily the first covenant had also ordinances of divine service." 
— Hebrews, ix. 1. 

The language of sign or symbol enters very largely into 
all the affairs of life. It is not by articulate speech 
alone that the inner experiences of the mind are 
expressed or communicated to others ; it is not in 
words only that we garner up for our own or others' 
use the fleeting phenomena of thought and feeling : 
there is a silent language of look and tone and gesture, 
which, as it is the earliest, is also the most vivid and 
impressive, medium of mind. The human spirit craves 
and finds embodiment for its impalpable, evanescent 
ideas and emotions, not merely in sounds that die 
away upon the ear, but in acts and observances that 
arrest the eye, and stamp themselves upon the memory, 
or in shapes and forms and symbols that possess a 
material and palpable continuity. ]STor, with all the 
advantages which, by reason of its greater compass and 
flexibility, spoken language possesses as an instrument 



i 



THE SIMPLICITY OF CHRISTIAN RITUAL. 227 

for the communication of thought, can it he questioned 
that in some respects it is inferior in force and intelli- 
gibleness to the unuttered language of symbol or sign. 

The superiority of sign or symbol as a vehicle of 
thought is in some sort implied in the very fact that it 
is the language of nature, the first which man learns, 
or rather which, with instinctive and universal intelli- 
gence, he employs. Long ere the infant can make use 
of conventional speech, it receives and reciprocates 
intelligence. It discerns the intimations of thought 
and feeling in the mother's face ; and by the respon- 
sive smile or tear — by the bright or beclouded face — by 
the clinging embrace or the cry of alarm — by the rest- 
less, ever- varying play of expression, motion, gesticu- 
lation — it indicates the possession of a most copious, 
though inartificial, exponent of mind. Betwixt the 
sign and the thing signified there is, in this case, a 
mysterious connection, deeply wrought into the very 
elements of our being, so that nowhere can the man be 
found to whom the gleaming countenance is not sig- 
nificant of joy and the trembling lip and tearful eye 
of grief, or to whom the manifold and subtle varieties 
of expression that flit over the human countenance and 
form are devoid of meaning. On the other hand, with 
but rare exceptions, the connection between words and 
the objects they represent is purely arbitrary, insomuch 
that it is only by conventional usage and artificial edu- 
cation that the instruction conveyed by words becomes 
intelligible to the auditor. 

There is something, again, in a visible and tangible 
sign, or in a significant or symbolic act, which, by its 



228 



SER3I0N X. 



very nature, appeals more impressively to the mind 
than mere vocables that vibrate for a moment on the 
organ of hearing and then pass away. Embody thought 
in a material representation or memorial, and it stands 
before you with a distinct and palpable continuity ; it 
can become the object of prolonged contemplation ■ it 
is permanently embalmed to the senses. Hence, when 
any feeling or sentiment — such, for instance, as that of 
regret or veneration for the dead — takes strong hold of 
the mind, there is a disinclination to rest satisfied with 
a mere verbal expression, or even written record, of 
the greatness we honour — a tendency to project and 
stereotype the inward feeling in some visible and en- 
during material form — to set up some palpable outward 
memorial in which thought and affection may see them- 
selves reflected. Hence, too, the innumerable cases in 
which we seek, by forms and observances, to give 
external ratification and significance to the events and 
transactions of life. The coronation of the monarch, 
and the ceremonials generally attendant on investiture 
in office or dignity, the forms and solemnities that 
accompany the passing of laws, the administration of 
justice, the sale and acquisition of lands, the badges 
of knighthood and other social honours, the rites and 
festivities of marriage, the gloomy attire and solemn 
pomp of the burial of the dead — these are some of the 
many instances in which actions and events are deemed 
incomplete till the mind has satisfied its craving to 
externalise its thoughts and feelings in some palpable 
material type or symbol. 

Moreover, it deserves to be considered that the lan- 



THE SIMPLICITY OF CHRISTIAN RITUAL. 229 



guage of symbol lies nearer to thought than that of 
verbal expression. Words are in great part but the 
representatives of symbols. It is only by signs and 
analogies drawn from the material world that the in- 
visible experiences of our minds can be communicated 
to others. As no man can look into another's mind 
and have direct cognisance of another's thoughts, we 
can only convey to others what is passing in our own 
minds, by selecting and pointing out some object or 
phenomenon of the outward world that bears an analogy 
to the thought or feeling within our breasts. An arbi- 
trary sound or word or name could never convey to 
another the thought or conception, the feeling or fancy, 
of which I am conscious. But God has constructed 
this wondrous material world of beauty and order in 
which we dwell, replete with resemblances, analogies, 
types of the inner world of thought. And so, in the 
effort to make others comprehend our mental experi- 
ences, we have only to turn at any moment to nature 
in order to find in some one of her many aspects, pro- 
cesses, movements, the desired type or representation 
of our inner mental state. All nature is to the soul a 
vocabulary of symbols, a ready-prepared repository of 
signs by which it may tell forth its inward conscious- 
ness to others. And so all language descriptive of 
mental states and experiences is universally acknow- 
ledged to be, in its origin, metaphorical, and to derive 
its force and expressiveness from the fact that it sum- 
mons up to the mind the phenomena of the visible 
world as symbols of thought. And if further proof of 
the utility and importance of symbol were wanting, it 



230 



SERMON X. 



might be found in the fact that all Nature is but one 
grand symbol by which God shadows forth His own 
invisible Being and character, — and that the chief glory 
of Nature lies not in her vastness or her order — in the 
beauty and grandeur of her forms, or the exquisite 
harmony of her adaptations, — but in this, that rock 
and stream and star and sea, the gleam of her sunshine 
and the gloom and mystery of her night, the voice of 
her waters and the silent majesty of her hills — all her 
mute and material and all her animate creatures alike, 
are but types and symbols of the invisible and eternal 
glory of Him concerning whom " day unto day uttereth 
speech, and night unto night teacheth knowledge." 

The principle on which symbolic language depends 
being thus deeply seated in man's nature, it might be 
anticipated that its influence would be apparent in that 
religion which is so marvellously adapted to his sym- 
pathies and wants. Entering deeply into nature and 
life, associated with our tenderest and holiest earthly 
relationships, the vehicle of our noblest sentiments of 
human affection, gratitude, veneration, it is natural to 
conclude that the voiceless language of sign and symbol 
will play no unimportant part in our religious life. 
But when, with these views, we turn to that religious 
economy under which we live, by nothing are we so 
much struck as by the simplicity of its external worship 
— the scantiness, unobtrusiveness, and seeming poverty 
of its ritual observances. And this absence of symbol 
in the Christian worship becomes all the more singular 
when contrasted with the sensuous beauty and splen- 
dour of the heathen religions amidst which Christianity 



THE SIMPLICITY OF CHRISTIAN RITUAL. 231 

was developed, and with, the imposing ceremonial, the 
elaborate symbolism, of that earlier dispensation from 
which it took its rise. Not unnatural would it have 
been for a heathen or a Jewish mind to be repelled by 
the apparent baldness and tameness of the Christian 
ritual; not strange, if, seated at the communion-table 
where a few Christian friends had met with the quiet 
informality of a common meal to partake of the elements 
of that simplest of festivals, the mind of the primitive 
convert had sometimes recurred with a feeling of wist- 
fulness to the days when, in temples vast and spacious, 
and resplendent with the rarest efforts of the painter's 
and sculptor's art, he had mingled with the throng of 
awestruck worshippers, gazed upon the gorgeous pro- 
cession of white-robed priests or virgins, or felt his 
soul thrilled with emotion when, amidst lamps and 
incense and garlands and music, the bleeding victim 
yielded up its life upon the altar. A religion without 
priest, without altar, without temple — whose places of 
assembly were the rude upper chamber, the mountain- 
side, or the sea-shore — whose most sacred mysteries 
involved no act more imposing than the breaking of 
bread or the washing of the person w-ith w 7 ater- — must 
have appeared poor and unimposing to many a super- 
ficial observer who could recall the outward magnifi- 
cence, the splendid vestments, the golden lamps, the 
ever-burning altar, the pealing multitudinous music, 
the awestruck prostrations, the mysterious shrine — 
the whole sumptuous symbolism of that ritual which 
had passed away. Eut in all such regrets the observer 
would, have erred. The outward impressiveness and 



232 



SER3I0N X 



material splendour of the ancient religion, "the ordin- 
ances of divine service and worldly sanctuary 99 of the 
"first covenant," were in reality but indications of 
imperfection and weakness. The ceremonial plainness, 
the literal, unsynibolic character of the new economy, 
is the exponent of its true dignity and glory. 'And 
just as we know that the student of history in our own 
day would greatly err who, captivated by the barbaric 
splendour of feudal times — by the show and spectacle, 
the jousts and tournaments and warlike pageants — by 
the gallantry and gaiety and glitter of an age long past, 
should fail to perceive that all these were but the signs 
of an imperfect and undeveloped civilisation — so would 
it be in the case before us. As the prosaic simplicity 
and unimposing quietness of our modern life is an 
indication of social progress and not of retrogression, so 
the comparative tameness and unimpressiveness of the 
Christian ritual is only a proof that the period of 
religious immaturity — the spiritual age of chivalry, so 
to speak — has passed away, and that we have reached a 
higher and more developed epoch of man's spiritual 
history. Accordingly, it is this thought which I shall 
now endeavour a little more fully to illustrate — suggest- 
ing to you various considerations in support of the 
doctrine that the simplicity of the Christian ritual is 
the exponent of an advanced, and not of a retrograde, 
condition of the Church. 

I. The simplicity of worship in the Christian Church 
is a sign of spiritual advancement, inasmuch as it arises, 
in some measure, from the fact that the gospel rites are 



TEE SIMPLICITY OF CEBISTIAN RITUAL. 233 

commemorative, whilst those of the former dispensation 
were anticijpative. 

To depict the unknown, a much more elaborate re- 
presentation is needed than merely to recall the known. 
To reproduce in the mind the idea of a former friend, 
or to revive the thought of an event with which we 
are conversant, is obviously a simpler and easier pro- 
cess than to portray the aspect and character of a 
stranger, or to convey to us an adequate conception of 
scenes and incidents with which we are altogether un- 
acquainted. If I wish to give you a correct notion of 
the person and manner of one whom you have never 
seen, I must submit to you, not a mere outline, or hint, 
or imperfect sketch, but a carefully-drawn portrait, or 
a full, minute, detailed account of him. But if I only 
desire to revive in your imagination the idea of some 
old and once familiar friend, no such elaborate process 
is needed : all that is required is merely hints for 
thought, incentives to the mind's own power of remi- 
niscence. The rudest outline — -nay, a name, a word, 
some trifling object associated with him — is in this case 
enough ; the mind itself does all the rest. And the 
eye no sooner rests upon the suggestive memorial — the 
locket, the book, the slight article of attire, — than in- 
stantly there rises up before you the old familiar form, 
the look, the smile, the gait, the tones of the voice, the 
thousand treasured details that constitute our concep- 
tion of the man. 

Now, analogous to this is the distinction between 
the ritual of Judaism and that of Christianity. The 
former partakes in some measure of the character of an 



234 



SER3I0N X. 



elaborate portrait or delineation intended for strangers, 
the latter of mere hints and suggestions for friends. 
To the Hebrew in ancient times Christ was a Being of 
whose person and character and work he had but the 
most vague and undefined conceptions; to the Christian 
worshipper he is no shadowy dream of the future, no 
vague and visionary personage of a distant age, but the 
dearest, most intimate, best beloved of friends, whose 
beautiful life stands forth before the mind with all 
the distinctness of history — whose glorious person and 
mission is the treasured and familiar contemplation 
of his secret thoughts. The former, accordingly, needed 
all the elaborate formality of type and ceremony, of 
temple and altar and sacrifice — of symbolic persons and 
objects and actions, to help out his idea of the Messiah 
and of His mighty work and mission. Eut to enable 
the latter to recall his Lord, no more is required than 
a few drops of water, a bit of broken bread, or a cup of 
wine. Around these simplest outward memorials, a 
host of thoughts, reflections, remembrances, are ready 
to gather. Deity Incarnate, Infinite Self-sacrifice, Ee~ 
conciliation with God, Pardon, Purity, Peace, Eternal 
Life through the blood of Jesus, union with Christ, 
and in Him with all good and holy beings, — these are 
some of the great Christian ideas already lodged in each 
devout worshipper's mind, and which awake at the 
suggestive touch of the sacramental symbols to invest 
them with a value altogether incommensurate with 
their outward worth. The very simplicity of these 
material symbols implies that the senses have less and 
the mind far more to do in the process of spiritual 



THE SIMPLICITY OF CHRISTIAN RITUAL. 235 

conception, than in a system of more imposing and 
obtrusive materialism. In the latter case, the mind, 
relying on the aid of forms and facts, could scarce pro- 
ceed a step without them ; in the former, facts but 
touch the spring, give the impulse to thought, and the 
full mind instantly loses hold of them, and passes on 
into the realm of spiritual reflection, independent of 
their aid. It is here in some respects as in the study 
of nature by the scientific observer. The mind that is 
already informed by the knowledge of great principles 
and laws, needs no grand and imposing phenomena, 
no illustration on a large scale to suggest to it their 
presence and operation. The fall of a stone is as 
significant of gravitation as the revolution of a planet ; 
the print of a foot deciphered on a rock is enough to 
revive to the imagination an ancient and extinct world ; 
and the form and structure of a wayside weed, or the 
colours that glisten in the dewdrop that trembles on 
its leaf, are replete with indications of grand laws of 
colour and symmetry that pervade the universe. In 
like manner, it is the very glory of the Christian 
economy that its symbolic forms are so slight and 
inelaborate ; for this very fact indicates that they are 
prepared for minds to which their use lies only in 
their suggestiveness — minds already imbued with spiri- 
tual principles and laws of which the simplest outer 
forms serve as illustrations and remembrancers equally 
with the most imposing. 

II. The simple and unimposing character of the 
Christian ritual is an indication of spiritual advance- 



236 



SERMON X. 



inent again, inasmuch as it arises from the fact, that 
ivhilst the rites of Judaism ivere mainly discij)linary, 
those of Christianity are spontaneous and expressive. 
In the old dispensation, ritual observances constituted 
an elaborate mechanism for the awakening of religious 
thought and feeling ; in the new economy, they are 
the actual and voluntary manifestation of religious 
thought and feeling already existing. They were mere 
machinery in the former case ; in the latter they are 
instinct with spirit and life : and therefore the very 
elaborateness of the ancient ritual is the exponent 
of its inferiority ; the unobtrusive simplicity of the 
modern, the sign of its true glory. 

For it is obvious that the most elaborate achieve- 
ments of art ever fall short in value and dignity of the 
simplest manifestations of life. It is possible, indeed, for 
artificial training in its apparent results greatly to sur- 
pass natural gifts. Acquired accomplishments may some- 
times seem to a superficial eye to excel original powers 
— the performances of a mere educational drill or disci- 
pline in their imposing exactness and elaborateness to 
be superior to the free and simple efforts of genius. 
By pouring glass into a mould, you may produce forms 
far more exact and symmetrical in appearance than 
that of the living crystal, which, from the nucleus 
within, works out its rough and careless natural beauty. 
By the pruning-knife and rigid training you may force 
the trees of a plantation into shapes and proportions 
far more exact, orderly, obedient to definite laws of 
form, than nature ever spontaneously manifests. But 
in either case, who would hesitate to pronounce the 



TEE SIMPLICITY OF CHRISTIAN RITUAL. 237 

inexact and seemingly rude results of life working from 
within to be infinitely more noble than the most ele- 
gant and methodical effects of art imposed from without. 
So, again, by dint of constant training, a person of but 
slight natural taste for music may acquire a certain 
superficial facility in musical performances — a me- 
chanical ease, rapidity, and exactness far surpassing 
that of uninstructed natural genius ; but the slightest 
air sung with native taste and feeling — nay, the irre- 
gular, wild instinctive melody that wakes the woodland 
echoes, is, in its untaught simplicity, essentially su- 
perior to all the achievements of a mere artificial 
discipline. 

Now, these analogies may elucidate, in some measure, 
the comparative worth of the Jewish and Christian 
ritual ; for the former partakes very much of the char- 
acter of an artificial discipline, the latter of a Life 
projecting itself spontaneously in outward forms. 

In the infancy of nations, as of individuals, the 
imagination is ever more active than the intellect, and 
the impressions conveyed through the senses deeper 
and more abiding than those which can be produced 
by any direct appeal to the understanding. The im- 
mature mind thinks in images. Abstract truth has no 
hold upon it. Illustrations are more intelligible than 
arguments. To a race such as that for which the 
institutions of the Ceremonial Law were prepared, a 
religion of thought — a spiritual system in which intel- 
lectual teaching and mental exercise held a prominent 
place — would have been utterly inappropriate. It 
would have been as much lost upon them as would be 



238 



SEMION X. 



the literature and laws of England, if attempted to be 
introduced wholesale among savages. Accordingly, a 
religious economy was devised, in which truth was 
elaborately presented in a concrete form, and spiritual 
lessons were lodged in material objects and actions. 
The ritual of Judaism was not the spontaneous creation 
of the religious thought and feeling of the worshippers. 
Altogether above their inventive powers, it was con- 
trived and obtruded upon them in all its completeness 
from without, — a ready-made system of religious 
symbols and exercises, to bring down truth to babes. 
The idea of God was embodied to the senses in a visible 
temple — of His holiness in an awful shrine or sanctuary, 
fenced off from curious gaze and unhallowed step. The 
notion of a Divine Order pervading human life was 
lodged in regulations for food and dress, distinctions 
between things clean and unclean, minute prescriptions 
and rules for all the varied relations and exigencies of 
social existence. The conceptions of sin, guilt, peni- 
tence, prayer, of atonement, pardon, purity, self-devo- 
tion, were forced on the senses, and drilled into minds 
otherwise incapable of rising to them, by laws of cere- 
monial exclusion, priests, costly sacrifices, sprinklings, 
lustrations — by the life's blood of victims dyeing the 
altar, or borne by priestly hands into the awful pre- 
sence of the Deity — by the mysterious flight of the 
sin-burdened scape-goat into a region of darkness and 
forgetfulness, from whence it could return no more. 
Without these and other manifold aids to thought, 
spiritual ideas to such a race would have been unat- 
tainable. But by such material devices, all life became, 



THE SIMPLICITY OF CHRISTIAN RITUAL. 239 



as it were, saturated with, religious suggestions. The 
Jew could not eat or drink, or dress, or sow or reap, 
or buy or sell, arrange his household, hold intercourse 
with neighbour or friend, perform any one function of 
individual or social life, without being met by restric- 
tions, forms, observances, whicli forced religious im- 
pression upon him, and, in combination with the more 
solemn ceremonial of the temple, left a constant deposit 
of spiritual thought upon the mind, and drilled the 
worshipper into religious habits. The entire ritual of 
Judaism was, therefore, essentially artificial. 

In a more spiritual and reflective age, on the other 
hand, in which the spiritual perceptions have become 
developed, and the mind has become receptive of direct 
religious instruction, such sensible helps to the forma- 
tion of thought are no longer necessary. The mind in 
which truth has become an intuition needs no longer 
to spell out its convictions by the aid of a picture-book. 
The avenue of spirit thrown open to the worshipper, 
he no more requires to climb slowly up to the presence- 
chamber of the king by the circuitous route of sense. 
But if ritual may in such an age be dispensed with in 
great measure as a means of instruction, it still performs 
an important function as a means of expression. TSo 
longer necessary as a mould for the shaping of thought, 
it has still its use as a form in which religious thought 
and feeling may find vent. If the necessity for a 
visible temple and sanctuary to symbolise God's resi- 
dence with man has ceased, now that He who is " the 
brightness of the Father's glory and the express image 
of His person/' the perfect symbol of the Divine, has 



240 



SERMON X. 



dwelt among us, — if to prompt our minds in conceiving 
of sin and sacrifice, no scenic show of victims slain and 
life's blood drenching earthly altars he needed, now 
that the stainless, sinless, all-holy One hath once for 
all offered up the sacrifice of a perfect life to God,— 
still there is in the Christian heart the demand for 
outward forms and rites to embody the reverence, the 
gratitude, the devotion, the love of which it is inwardly 
conscious. The soul, in its relation to an unseen 
Father, still craves for some outer medium of expres- 
sion that shall give form to feeling — that shall tell 
forth its devotion to the heavenly Friend as the smile, 
the look, the grasp of the hand, the meeting at the 
festive board, the gifts and tokens of affection, exter- 
nalise and express our sentiments towards those we 
love on earth. 

But in this case it is obvious that no elaborate system 
of prescribed rites and symbols is possible. The very 
nobleness of the use to which ritual is devoted in the 
new economy, precludes all but the most general authori- 
tative regulations. In Judaism it was necessary that 
all should be prescribed • in Christianity, almost every- 
thing must be left to the discretion of the Church. 
There the lawgiver must do everything ; here he can 
clo little or nothing. For when symbols are meant to 
teach, it were as absurd to leave anything to be deter- 
mined by the worshipper as to permit a child to direct 
his own education. But you cannot so regulate the 
way in which a man shall express his sentiments and 
feelings. Nature and character are spontaneous ; they 
will not take any form, utter themselves through any 



THE SIMPLICITY OF CHRISTIAN RITUAL. 241 

exact and inflexible mode of expression which may be 
furnished them from without. Who can love by rule, 
manifest sorrow by stereotyped gestures, indicate gra- 
titude or admiration by adopting looks and postures 
authoritatively prescribed ? Try to make a man do so, 
and instead of helping, you will cramp and vitiate his 
feelings, and by the effort to force consciousness into 
one special mould or shape, kill the life you mean to 
cultivate. In attempting to work up feeling into 
another's forms, a man would end by ceasing to feel, 
or by becoming a hypocrite and formalist. The reality 
of life is manifested by nothing so much as by the 
endless variety of its outward developments. Every 
herb of the field has its own individuality of form; 
every acorn enfolds a different oak. Attempt to con- 
struct some outward framework of uniformity for 
nature, and the latitudinarian oaks and elms, the in- 
formal lilies of the field and fowls of the air, will 
breathe forth their protest in beauty, and sound it out 
in song. And how shall the nobler life of the soul be 
constrained into uniformity] How shall human spirits, 
each endowed with a separate will and an individual 
character, adopt one measured routine of expression, 
without crushing that very nature whose life is freedom ? 
The general principles of religion, the essential elements 
of Christian life, are indeed the same in all men ; and 
so, in outline, it is possible to anticipate and regulate 
the forms in which the common life of the Church 
shall find expression. But all such regulations, it is 
evident, must be of the most simple and general char- 
acter — not descending to the minutiae which the indi- 
Q 



242 



SERMON X. 



vidual genius of nations and communities may affect, 
but keeping to the broad platform of trie common uses 
and needs of humanity. And the conclusion to which, 
from this argument, we are led is obviously this, that 
the glory of our Christian ritual lies in its very sim- 
plicity. Tor the manifestation of our common life in 
God, and of our common faith in Christ, the mind 
craves some outward badge or symbol; and so, in 
gracious condescension to our needs, our Lord has in- 
stituted the two sacramental rites ; but even these He 
has prescribed but in outline, leaving all accessories to 
be filled in, as the varied needs of His people, in 
different times and places and circumstances, should 
dictate. The common heart of the Church, in all 
lands and ages, shall ever crave a medium of intercourse 
with its Lord, and so the ordinance of common prayer 
has been instituted; the universal and spontaneous 
voice of the soul's gratitude and adoration and love- 
as universal as the emotions themselves — is song ; and 
so, for the outflow of its devotions, the channel of 
common praise has been provided. But forasmuch as 
not more various are the languages and idioms of the 
nations and races into which the human family is 
divided, than the modes of utterance through which 
the spirit of humanity in different regions and ages 
spontaneously expresses itself — forasmuch as the tones 
of the human voice are not more endlessly diversified 
than are the inflexions of the mind and heart, in giving 
vent to the same thoughts and sentiments — so our 
gracious Lord, in His loving wisdom, hath prescribed 
no one form of speech or song, no one inflexible 



THE SIMPLICITY OF CHRISTIAN RITUAL. 243 

language of worship, for His church on earth. And 
in this lies the very grandeur of its worship, that in 
the " chartered freedom " of our Christian ritual, each 
nation and community, each separate society and church 
and individual, lifting up its own note of adoration, all 
are found to blend in the one accordant anthem, the 
one manifold yet harmonious tribute of the Universal 
Church's praise. 

I conclude this discourse by the remark, that the 
simplicity of the Christian rites serves as a safeguard 
against those obvious dangers which are incident to all 
ritual worship. 

The chief of these is the tendency in the unspiritual 
mind to stop short at the symbol — in other words, to 
transfer to the visible sign feelings appropriate only to 
the things signified, or to rest content with the per- 
formance of outward ceremonial acts, apart from the 
exercise of those devout feelings which lend to such 
acts any real value. Even in our common experience 
there is a strong propensity in the mind to invest 
significant objects and acts with the feelings due only 
to the realities, material or spiritual, which they repre- 
sent. Our associations cling to the visible symbol of 
what is desirable or good, till it becomes in itself more 
precious to us than that which at first gave it all its 
value. To take the most flagrant instance — we know 
that money has no value, except as the conventional 
representative of things which gratify our natural 
desires. But money, desired and loved at first for the 
sake of other things, intercepts by degrees the attach- 



244 



SERMON X. 



ment of which, it has been the medium, and becomes 
an ultimate object of desire and love in itself. The 
passion of avarice, however demonstrably irrational, is 
one against which reason is impotent. By the slow 
deposit of pleasurable associations on a false basis, it 
consolidates into a principle of action so potent that 
the enjoyments of life are one by one sacrificed for that 
which is but their worthless representative. If you 
could dispense, in whole or in part, with the symbol, 
the passion that is based upon it would be no longer 
possible. If society could conduct its commerce with- 
out the intervention of arbitrary signs of value, no 
room would be left for the foolish substitution which 
the vice of avarice implies. Eealities alone would be 
regarded as important ; fictitious symbols would cease 
to have any place in our regard. 

Now this tendency of the mind operates still more 
fatally in our spiritual experience. The signs of spiri- 
tual realities are even more apt than those of temporal 
to arrest and absorb the sentiments due to the things 
signified. A religion in which ritual holds a prominent 
place is notoriously liable to degenerate into formalism. 
The feelings of awe and reverence for unseen and spiri- 
tual objects, coming often at the suggestive call of the 
sacred symbol, gradually transfer themselves to that 
with which they have been associated. The invisible 
good is less and less remembered. To the religious 
miser the mere showy counters become gradually all in 
all, and he learns to content himself with the ring and 
glitter of the worthless sign, to the utter abnegation of 
the blessings for which it stands. And this propensity 



THE SIMPLICITY OF CHRISTIAN RITUAL. 245 



acts with greater force in religion, from the fact that 
the things represented or symbolised are not, as in our 
secular experience, in themselves palpable and agree- 
able. The pleasures which money represents are mainly 
pleasures cognisable by the senses, and for which we 
have strong natural desires. The objects represented 
by religious signs, on the other hand, are invisible, 
immaterial, requiring an effort of mind to summon 
them up — an effort which it is the less disposed to 
make that they are also objects which, to the defec- 
tive nature of man, are not naturally and inherently 
attractive. If, therefore, the inclination of the mind 
to drop the reality and cling to the representative be 
strong in any case, it must be especially potent here. 
It is easy to employ the sacramental sign of purity; it 
is far from easy to bring the mind and heart into con- 
tact with the hallowing influences which it represents. 
It costs no effort to receive the emblems of a dying 
Saviour ; to multitudes it is an irksome task to raise 
the thoughts and affections into communion with an 
unseen Lord. To bend the knee with external decorum, 
or to send forth from the lip mechanical sounds and 
intonations, is an act which calls for scarcely any 
mental exertion; but it demands the strenuous up- 
gathering of all our inward energies in order to pray 
with the spirit, or to offer up the true inner melody of 
adoring gratitude and love to God. The worldly and 
unspiritual mind is ready to avail itself of any excuse 
for evading the task of spiritual worship, and an excuse 
is too readily accessible in the decorous observance of 
its external forms. The tendency of multitudes even 



246 



SER3WN X. 



in the case of the simplest ritual, and much more where 
ritual is obtrusive and elaborate, is to make the visi- 
bilities of worship the whole of it. The little measure 
of devotion they possess is expended on the mere 
machinery through which devotion acts. The spirit's 
wing, too feeble to bear it up to the empyrean heights 
of holy faith and love, nutters in the mere atmosphere 
of form. Conscience, ill at ease without some semblance 
of religion, is cheaply pacified by a respectful attention 
to its material accompaniments ; and the more nu- 
merous and elaborate such accompaniments, the more 
satisfactory the bribe. The true way to avoid this 
error is, obviously, to remove as much as possible its 
cause. Let there be no arbitrary and needless inter- 
vention between the soul of the worshipper and the 
Divine object of its homage. Let the eye of faith gaze 
on the Invisible through the simplest and purest 
medium. Deprive it of all excuse to trifle curiously 
with the telescope, instead of using it in order to see. 
And forasmuch as, to earthly worship, formal aids are 
indispensable, let it ever be remembered that that form 
is the best which least diverts attention to itself, and 
best helps the soul to hold fellowship with God. 

Moreover, the danger thus incident to an elaborate 
ceremonial, of substituting ritual for religion, is in- 
creased by the too common tendency to mistake aes- 
thetic emotion for religious feeling. It is quite possible, 
apart from a religion of conscience and spiritual con- 
viction, to get up a sensuous mimicry of pious emotion. 
As the outer form of a book, its showy binding or fair 
type, may be admired by many who have neither intel- 



THE SIMPLICITY OF CHRISTIAN RITUAL. 247 



Hgence nor taste to appreciate its contents ; or, as the 
fair and noble features and graceful form of man or 
woman may be beheld with delight by not a few, who 
are incapable of honouring the still nobler beauty of 
the mind within — so there is that in the mere dress 
and drapery of religion, the arbitrary form and acci- 
dents of spirituality, which may elicit deep emotion 
from many a mind that has never felt one throb of 
true religious feeling — of reverence or love for the 
inner spirit and essence of religion itself. Awe, rever- 
ence, rapt contemplation, the kindling of heart and 
swelling of soul, which the grand objects of faith are 
adapted to excite, may, in a man of sensitive mind or 
delicate organisation, find a close imitation in the feel- 
ings called forth by a tasteful and splendid ceremonial. 
Beauty, it is true, is not hostile to goodness ; on the 
contrary, the Beautiful and the Good, ever closely akin, 
blend ultimately in the one glorious unity of the Divine 
nature. The highest perception and keenest relish for 
the Beautiful, therefore, is that which is possible only 
to the pure and holy mind. Yet there is a lower sen- 
sibility to Beauty which is attainable apart from the 
moral condition of the heart, and which is often felt 
most keenly by the most unspiritual and irreligious 
of men. A refined bodily organisation, a susceptible 
nervous system, a strongly emotional temperament, 
especially if these be combined with a mind of some 
measure of intellectual culture, will render a man 
extremely sensitive to the beauty of the outer accom- 
paniments of religious worship. The faculties which 
qualify their possessor for the pleasures of taste — 



248 



SER3I0N X. 



which enable him to take delight in art or nature, in 
poetry or painting or music, in scenic effects or dramatic 
exhibitions — are identical with those which an ela- 
borate and poetic ritual calls into play. And there is, 
therefore, a semi-sensuous delight in religious worship 
imposingly conducted, which may be felt by the least 
conscientious even more than by the sincerely devout. 
The soul that is devoid of true reverence towards God 
may be rapt into a spurious elation while in rich and 
solemn tones the loud-voiced organ peals forth His 
praise. The heart that never felt one throb of love to 
Christ may thrill with an ecstasy of sentimental tender- 
ness while soft voices, now blending, now dividing, in 
combined or responsive strains, celebrate the glories of 
redeeming love. And not seldom the most sensual 
and profligate of men have owned to that strange, 
undefined, yet delicious feeling of awe and elevation 
that steals over the spirit in some fair adorned temple 
on which all the resources of art have been lavished — 
where soft light floods the air, and mystic shadows 
play over pillar and arch and vaulted roof, and the 
hushed and solemn stillness is broken only by the 
voice of prayer or praise. Christian thought and 
feeling may indeed appropriate to its own high uses 
these outer things. All that is noble in taste and 
beautiful in art it may lay hold of, and, by the inner 
transforming power of devotion, ennoble and spiritual- 
ise. Nay, Eeligion, in one sense, asserts its right to 
all that is beautiful and noble and lovely on earth, and 
by its regal touch confers on earthly things a heavenly 
dignity. There are ways in which all the treasures of 



THE SIMPLICITY OF CHRISTIAN RITUAL. 249 



genius, all the creations of poetry, all the resources of 
art, may be made tributary to the cause of Christ. 
Still it should never be forgotten that, if largely intro- 
duced into the act of religious worship, the refinements 
of art may become to multitudes, not the means, but 
the end. Instead of walking by the light you kindle, 
many, gazing on the beauty of the lamp, will stumble 
in the Christian path. For one that can take hold of 
the angel's hand, there are multitudes who will content 
themselves with gazing artistically on the splendour of 
his vesture. It is easy to admire the sheen of the 
sapphire throne, while we leave its glorious Occupant 
unreverenced and unrecognised. Banish from the ser- 
vice of God all coarseness and rudeness — all that 
would distract by offending the taste of the worshipper, 
just as much as all that would disturb by subjecting 
him to bodily discomfort, and you leave the spirit free 
for its own pure and glorious exercise. But too studi- 
ously adorn the sanctuary and its services ; obtrude an 
artificial beauty on the eye and sense of the worshipper, 
and you will surely lead to formalism and self-deception. 
The meretricious attractions of form may bring numbers, 
but it will not add true strength to the Church. The 
artistic splendour of ritual may kindle many hearts with 
emotion, but it will be with unhallowed fire. Better 
that the world should stay away than join Christ's 
ranks on false pretences ; better that the hearts of men 
should remain utterly cold, than that, warmed by 
spurious feeling, they should deem themselves inspired 
by a pure and holy flame. 



SERMON XL 



TEE COMPARATIVE INFLUENCE OF CHARACTER 
AND DOCTRINE. 

"Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine ; continue in them : for 
in doing this thou shalt "both save thyself and them that hear thee." 
—1 Timothy, iv. 16. 

In counselling his friend and follower as to the best 
method of doing good in the sphere of duty allotted to 
him, the apostle seems here to lay the chief stress, not 
on doctrine or teaching, but on life or conduct. " Take 
heed," is his admonition, not first to what you teach, 
and then to what you are ; not primarily to your verbal 
instructions, and then to the spirit of your own char- 
acter and life, but first "to thyself" and then "to the 
doctrine." And the principle thus enunciated is, it 
will be easy to see, by no means exclusively applicable 
to ministers, or public teachers and office-bearers in the 
Church. It is, on the contrary, a principle fraught 
with instruction to all, of whatever standing, whose 
duty it may be to teach, or admonish, or administer 
moral and religious guidance to others — to every parent, 



CHARACTER AND DOCTRINE. 



251 



every Sunday-school teacher, nay, to every Christian 
man who wishes to do good by speaking a word of 
serious import to a brother. For it is nothing less 
than the broad principle that, in order to do good, the 
first and great effort must be to be good, — that extent 
and accuracy of religious knowledge, however import- 
ant, are secondary, as a means of influence, to the moral 
discipline and culture of our own heart and life. In 
order to persuade others of the truth as it is in Jesus, 
the primary qualification, we are here taught, is to have 
our own souls thoroughly imbued with its power. 

In asserting, however, the necessity of personal good- 
ness in the religious instructor, it is not maintained 
that an irreligious man is absolutely disqualified for 
speaking God's truth, or even for so speaking it as to 
do some good to others. Both reason and experience 
are against the notion that it needs great personal piety 
to be an accurate expositor of the theory of divine truth, 
or that none but men of very holy lives can be profound 
theologians or able preachers. To be versant in a 
science does not of necessity imply that we must be 
skilled in the correlative art. Theory and practice, 
science and art, the knowledge of principles and the 
power to apply them, are attainments which depend on 
totally different faculties, and which may. be, and in 
actual experience very commonly are, dissociated from 
each other. The able or eloquent writer on the prin- 
ciples of government would not always make the best 
practical statesman, or the acute expounder of theories 
in political economy the most sagacious financier. It 
is possible to know scientifically the principles of music 



252 



SERMON XI. 



without being able to sing a note, — to discuss and 
enforce the principles of grammar and rhetoric, and yet 
be a feeble speaker or inelegant writer. And the same 
remark is borne out in the sphere of man's spiritual 
life. The facts and data being given, a man may play 
with the terms of theology as with the terms of algebra. 
There is nothing to hinder a clever reasoner, if he apply 
his mind to the subject, from working out a doctrine 
as he would work out a syllogism, from putting a point 
in theology as happily as a point in philosophy or law, 
or from throwing the lights of fancy, illustration, elo- 
quence, around any of the high themes of religion as 
vividly as the clever special pleader around the most 
secular argument or appeal. The experience of man- 
kind in all ages has shown how possible it is for a man 
to draw fine fancy pictures of the beauty of virtue 
amidst a life that is sadly unfamiliar with her presence, 
to utter pathetic harangues on charity with a heart of 
utter selfishness, and to declaim on purity and self- 
denial whilst living in sloth and luxurious self-indul- 
gence. The truth of God may thus be studied as a 
mere intellectual exercise, and preached as a feat of 
rhetorical address, whilst yet the premises of the 
preacher's high argument are utterly foreign to his own 
godless experience. Like a sick physician, the preacher 
may prescribe, perhaps successfully, to others for the 
disease of which himself is dying. Like the " sound- 
ing brass or tinkling cymbal," he may give forth in- 
spiring and animating strains to stir the hearts of men, 
of which himself is but the unconscious medium. 
But whilst it is not denied that sound religious 



CHARACTER AND DOCTRINE. 



253 



instruction may emanate from a teacher of little per- 
sonal piety — that true and holy words may be spoken 
by lips untrue and profane, we fall back with not less 
confidence on the assertion, that an experimental 
acquaintance with divine truth — deep religious earnest- 
ness, is the first and grand qualification in the teacher, 
incomparably the most powerful means of usefulness, 
and the surest pledge of success. Truth is indeed in 
itself a mighty instrument, whatsoever hand may wield 
it j but though its edge may be as keen and its temper 
as fine in the most unhallowed as in the holiest hands, 
in the former it must often prove a weapon unwieldy 
and ineffective as the warrior's sword in the weakling's 
grasp. Conveyed as correctly by human hps as by the 
pages of a book, truth spoken is yet for its influence 
by no means as independent of the moral make and 
structure of the living teacher, as truth written of the 
fabric of the printed page. To be duly effective, truth 
must not merely fall from the Hp, but breathe forth 
from the life ; it must come, not like incense from the 
censer that only holds it, but like fragrance, from a 
flower, exhaling from a nature suffused with it through- 
out. The doctrines and principles you teach, in order 
to manifest their inherent efficacy, must be known and 
reproduced, not in mere logical order and system, like 
dried specimens of plants in a naturalist's collection, 
but with the fresh waving fragrance of the living plant 
or flower — pervaded by the vital sap, unfolding to the 
sunbeams, and fanned by the breezes of heaven. In 
one word — and this is the principle which I wish now 
to illustrate — the first qualification of the religious 



254 



SERMON XL 



instructor is, not knowledge, but piety. As a means 
of moral and religious influence, life should precede 
doctrine, character he regarded as of even greater im- 
portance than verbal teaching ; we should have respect 
to the sequence of the apostle's counsels in the text, 
" Take heed unto thyself and unto the doctrine." — I 
will adduce in the sequel one or two considerations in 
support of this principle. 

I. That life is in some respects of prior importance 
to doctrine may be perceived by reflecting,— that life 
tends very greatly to modify a man's own views of doe- 
trine; in other words, that personal character tinges a 
man's perceptions of truth. It is a well-known law of 
our mental experience that the condition and character 
of the observing mind greatly modify the knowledge 
which it receives from outward objects. Whether it 
be things material or moral, objects of sense or objects 
of thought, in most cases we 'perceive according as we 
are. The same objects may be externally present to a 
hundred spectators, and yet be practically different to 
each of them. In surveying the outward world, for 
instance, we " half create and half perceive ; " and in 
order to the correctness and completeness of our per- 
ception of its varied phenomena, it is necessary, not 
merely that they be externally presented to us, but 
that we should "take heed to ourselves," that our 
powers of perception be in unimpaired, healthy, vi- 
gorous action. Every one knows, for example, that 
tire varied colours wherewith the face of the visible 
earth seems to be clothed, exist not literally in the 



CHARACTER AND DOCTRINE. 



255 



objects themselves, but owe their splendour to the eye 
that surveys them. It is only the unknown or occult 
causes of colour that exist in nature ; colour itself is in 
the organism and mind of the observer ; and through 
physical disease or organic defect our perceptions of 
colour may be marred or destroyed. The jaundiced eye 
blanches nature. The peculiar phenomenon of colour- 
blindness shows that to many an eye the garniture of 
beauty which bespreads the green earth is lost ; and 
without any change on the face of nature, you have 
only to suppose, in any case, the organ of vision to 
undergo some strange affection, and instantly the whole 
aspect of the visible world would be changed; the 
splendour would vanish from the grass and the glory 
from the flower, the purple from the mountain and the 
azure from the cloud, and all nature present to the 
spectator but one sombre and unvaried expanse of 
black or grey. Or if we pass from the mere organism 
through which man's spirit converses with the outward 
world to that spirit itself, still more obvious illustration 
have we of the principle before us. It is the state of 
the inner eye, the condition of that spirit within us 
which looks out on nature through the loopholes of 
sense, that makes the world's aspect to be to us what 
it is. It is the same world which is beheld by the 
man of deep thoughtfulness and sensibility, and by the 
dull observer in whom the sense of beauty has never 
been evoked, and yet how different that world to each ! 
The former, gifted with a spirit in profound sympathy 
with nature, and disciplined into exquisite sensibility 
to her loveliness, discerns and responds to her hidden 



256 



SERMON XL 



meaning ; sees behind the outer forms of meadow, 
wood, and mountain, a presence to which his own 
spirit thrills, and catches, with instinctive intelligence, 
as the child the smile or frown on the mother's face, 
the import of each expression on her ever-varying 
countenance; whilst the latter, blind to every " remoter 
charm or interest unborrowed from the eye," beholds 
in the same scenes nothing more than a particular dis- 
position of earth and wood and water, which calls forth 
scarcely any emotion in his mind. And though there 
may be much of this deeper insight into nature which 
is to be ascribed to an original and instinctive sensi- 
bility, yet it is only by long and careful training, by 
profound study and self-discipline, that this poetic 
instinct is developed and matured. It is only, in other 
words, by "taking heed to himself," that the observer 
can attain to the true knowledge of nature, and the 
deepest appreciation of her beauty. 

Now the same law obtains in that higher province 
to which the text relates. As our perceptions of 
beauty, so our perceptions of moral and spiritual truth 
are modified by the inner spirit and character of the 
percipient. Self conditions doctrine. A man's own 
moral state is very much the measure of his moral con- 
victions. The highest spiritual truths lie beyond the 
range of a soul that is not in harmony with them, and 
the glimmerings of truth which a defective nature gains, 
take their complexion from its moral tone and spirit. 
As the loveliest scene on which the eye of man can 
rest, contains no revelation of beauty to the insensitive 
and unreflecting observer, so the Bible is no revelation 



CHARACTER AND DOCTRINE. 



257 



of truth to the unspiritual mind. The glorious dis- 
coveries of divine things on the page of inspiration are 
lost to the soul in which the moral sense, the vision 
and faculty divine, is dull or dormant. God is but a 
name to the mind in which no divine instinct, no godly 
sympathies and aspirations, have begun to stir. There 
can be no true faith in the Incarnation, however logi- 
cally accurate your notions of the person of Christ, 
until, by the intuition of a holy and heavenly heart, 
you feel Him to be divine. The sacrifice of the Cross, 
with all the love and tenderness and self-abnegation, 
the sorrow and anguish, yet joy deeper still than sor- 
row, that breathes around it, is no mere barren fact or 
intellectual dogma, of which historic proof or logical 
demonstration can convince us. For the true appre- 
hension of this there is an essential inaptitude in the 
selfish and unloving spirit; it can be discerned only 
by the soul in which, however faintly, yet in reality, 
the pure, loving, self-devoted spirit of J esus has begun 
to dwell. 

Moreover, in farther illustration of the thought that 
self modifies doctrine, consider how notoriously our 
opinions in secular matters are affected by our preju- 
dices and passions. Who of us, where personal interest 
is at stake, can trust with unerring certainty to the 
conclusions of his own judgment ] Experience proves 
that agreeable falsehoods are at least as likely to be 
believed as disagreeable truths. The wish is often 
father to the thought ; and where anything is to be 
gained or lost by our opinions, the winning side has 
almost invariably the majority of adherents. With 

R 



258 



SERMON XI. 



unconscious partiality, the attention is withdrawn from 
the objections and fixed with all its power of applica- 
tion on the arguments in favour of the foregone con- 
clusion; or, on the other hand, in the contemplation 
of some obnoxious truth, the focus of observation is 
instinctively shifted ; proofs are underrated or ignored, 
whilst every grain of counter-evidence is magnified 
into importance ; and with such unconscious, yet most 
damaging defectiveness in the mechanism of judgment, 
the desired, however erroneous, result is easily arrived 
at. How generally, again, does party spirit, education, 
early or hereditary associations, bias the beliefs of men ! 
Assail some old and time -hallowed notion, some revered 
fiction which has struck deep its roots into the soil of 
the uncultivated mind, and around which a thousand 
early and tender associations have gathered, and your 
most formidable arguments will fail to shake it. En- 
deavour to introduce new opinions, uncongenial to 
educational or class convictions, and often all the force 
of truth will in vain be exerted to obtain for them a 
place in the rugged and reluctant mind. Thus even 
on the lower ground of secular truth it needs, in the 
formation of opinion, the rarest candour and self- watch- 
fulness to conduct the process aright. But this dis- 
cipline is still more indispensable to the religious 
inquirer. For there are no interests so tremendous as 
those which are involved in our religious beliefs. In 
no other province of inquiry are deeper passions stirred, 
or prejudices, associations, habits, more numerous and 
inveterate, called into play. The very fundamental 
and primary truths of religion, the Being of God, the 



CHARACTER AND DOCTRINE. 



259 



Existence of a Moral Order and a righteous Betribution, 
the doctrines of Sin, Pardon, Salvation — all involve in 
their reception or rejection results hearing with over- 
whelming influence on the present and future interests 
of the inquirer, — all rouse into intense activity hopes, 
fears, appetites, desires, wishes, anxieties, which it is 
almost impossible in our investigations to set aside, in 
order that judgment may have scope for calm and un- 
disturbed action. How urgent, then, the necessity for 
jealous candour and self-control in the study of divine 
truth. As the observer of the phenomena of the 
material heavens takes pains to perfect the instrument 
with which he works, aware that the slightest flaw in 
the speculum may vitiate his observations ; so ought 
the contemplator of that nobler orbed world of truth 
to take heed that the disc of the inner mechanism of 
conscience be polished from all distorting prejudice or 
soil of selfish passion. As the chemist seeks to render 
his balances exquisitely sensitive, and carefully elimi- 
nates from his results all variations of temperature or 
other disturbing elements ; so should the student of 
divine things strive by God's grace to attain the acute- 
ness and delicacy of a judgment freed from all deflecting 
influences, and poised with an exquisite nicety of dis- 
crimination on which not the slightest grain of truth 
is lost. He should cultivate, in one word, by the 
discipline of a holy life, a truer than philosophic calm- 
ness and candour — the calmness of a spirit that dwells 
in habitual communion with God, the candour of a 
mind that has nothing to lose, and everything to gain, 
by truth. 



260 



SERMON XI. 



II. In further illustration of the principle that Life 
or Character conies, in order of importance, before 
" Doctrine," it is to be considered that Life or Char- 
acter affects not only a man's own views of truth, but 
also his power of expressing or communicating truth to 
others. For if, from any cause, the organ of spiritual 
perception be impaired or undeveloped in a man's mind, 
of course he can communicate to others no clearer views 
than he himself has received. The stream can rise no 
higher than its source. The medium lends its own 
defects to the light which passes through it. Trans- 
mitted through you, truth will reach other minds in 
the same scanty measure in which it has entered your 
own ; it will become, in the process of transmission, 
coloured, dimmed, distorted by the defectiveness of 
the intervening nature. 

It is true indeed, as has been already said, that we 
may teach truth mechanically and by hearsay. It is 
possible for a man to talk above himself, and to convey 
to others correct formulas of truths that are foreign to 
his own experience. However weak, faulty, untruthful, 
in his own character, there is nothing to hinder a man 
from talking as wise and good as a book. If a worldly- 
minded parent can read, as easily may he speak, sage 
and solemn lessons to his children. An undevout 
preacher may have no difficulty in getting up the 
stereotyped phraseology of a religious sect or school, 
and pouring it forth as glibly as if it were the natural 
outflow of his own convictions and feelings. Nay, in 
so far as the mere intellectual and rhetorical part of 
the process is concerned, it is possible that the un- 



CHARACTER AND DOCTRINE. 



261 



spiritual man may preach, or teach better than the 
more devout. Tor the intellectual vigour which, irre- 
spective of personal character, would make a man an 
able reasoner or talker on politics, or science, or 
philosophy, does not desert him when he turns to 
theology. To compare and generalise facts, to evolve 
principles and laws, to follow out a chain of logical 
deduction, to trace out the connection and sequence of 
ideas, and lucidly to express or eloquently to enforce 
the results of thought, are operations for which there 
is at least equal scope in things spiritual as in things 
secular, and the talent for which, therefore, may be as 
strikingly manifested by the worst as by the best and 
holiest of mankind. 

But however this may be, there is that in a defective 
or sinful life which will vitiate the ablest and most 
eloquent teaching. For besides the consideration that 
men will be little disposed to listen to arguments which 
have not been cogent enough to reform and regulate 
the life of him who employs them, it must be remem- 
bered that the teaching which has not its root in 
personal experience, will lack a certain undefinable yet 
most potent element, which lends to words their true 
effectiveness. To exert real power over men's minds 
and hearts, what you speak must bo not only true, but 
true to you. Tor the conveyance of thought and 
feeling from mind to mind is not a process which 
depends on mere verbal accuracy. Language is not the 
only medium through which moral convictions and 
impressions are transmitted from speaker to hearer. 
There is another and more subtle mode of communica- 



262 



SERMON XI. 



tion, a mysterious moral contagion, by means of which, 
irrespective of the mere intellectual apparatus employed, 
the instructor's beliefs and emotions are passed over 
into the minds of his auditory. Strong conviction has 
a force of persuasion irrespective of the mere oral 
instrument by which it works. Through the rudest 
forms of speech originality and earnestness make them- 
selves felt, and a sentence of simple earnest talk will 
sometimes thrill the heart which the most refined and 
laboured rhetoric would leave untouched. But in order 
to the evolving of this element in the process of 
instruction, obviously the teacher's own religious nature 
must be penetrated and quickened by the truth he 
utters. The magnetic force must saturate his own 
spirit ere it flow out to others in contact with him. 
ISTo stereotyped orthodoxy, no simulated fervours, how- 
ever close or clever the imitation, will achieve the magic 
effects of reality. The preacher may reproduce verbatim 
the language of the wise and good, copy to the letter 
the phraseology in which religious thought and feeling 
have been often couched, but so long as they are but 
the echo of other men's experience, and not the ex- 
pression of his own, the profoundest truths will fall 
ineffectively from his lips. There will be an unnatural- 
ness and unreality in the very tone and manner in 
which he utters them. The words that once, spoken 
by true and living men, had life and power in them, 
spoken by him will be spiritless, lifeless, vapid. The 
rod is not in the magician's hand, and it will not con- 
jure. In other great arts, there is, we know, a Strang* 
power which genius and originality confer on their pos- 



CHARACTER AND DOCTRINE, 



263 



sessor, and which, no mere intellectual discipline can 
communicate. The poet is horn, not made ; and hy no 
literary culture, however elaborate, can the man of mere 
cleverness, closely as he may echo the poet's style and 
manner, gain that nameless power to move and thrill 
and captivate the hearts of men — that secret charm of 
thoughts that breathe and words that burn, which we 
recognise in him on whom the true poetic spirit rests. 
So in that far higher region of thought and feeling 
with which the preacher of divine truth is conversant, 
there is a power of reality, an influence over men's 
minds and hearts, possessed by the man on whom a 
nobler and loftier than the inspiration of genius rests, 
and whose own soul is in daily communion with the 
heavens, which no mere intellectual discipline can 
emulate. Bring your own spirit to the fount of in- 
spiration, live in habitual communion with the infinite 
Truth and Life, and the words you speak to men, 
whether rude or refined, will possess a charm, a force, 
a power to touch their hearts and mould their secret 
souls, which no words of eloquent conventionality can 
ever attain. There will be an intuitive recognition of 
the divine fire which has touched your lips. Other 
teachers may be more able, learned, accomplished. In 
apter words, and with more of the logician's or the 
orator's art, may they discourse of things divine ; but 
to them there will be something lacking still. The 
shape and semblance and colour of truth they may 
display, but it will be as a waxen imitation of the 
lilies of the field ; the divine aroma will not be there. 
The movement and play of vital thought and feeling 



264 



SERMON XL 



they may contrive to simulate, tut it will be but a 
mimicry after all— the galvanising of dead thought, 
not the free and spontaneous power and grace of living 
truth. 

III. The only other consideration I shall adduce in 
support of the principle involved in the text is — that 
Life or Character has in many respects an influence 
ivhich direct Teaching or Doctrine cannot exert 

Actions, in many ways, teach better than words, 
and even the most persuasive oral instruction is greatly 
vivified when supplemented by the silent teaching of 
the life. 

Consider, for one thing, that actions are more in- 
telligible than words. All verbal teaching partakes 
more or less of the necessary vagueness of language, 
and its intelligibility is dependent, in a great measure, 
on the degree of intellectual culture and ability in the 
mind of the hearer. Ideas, reflections, deductions, dis- 
tinctions, when presented in words, are liable to misap- 
prehension ; their power is often modified or lost by the 
obscurity of the medium through which they are con- 
veyed, and the impression produced by them is apt 
very speedily to vanish from the mind. Many minds 
are inaccessible to any formal teaching that is not of 
the most elementary character ; and there are compara- 
tively few to whom an illustration is not more intelli- 
gible than an argument. 

But whatever the difficulty of understanding words, 
deeds are almost always intelligible. Let a man not 
merely speak but act the truth; let him reveal his 



CHARACTER AND DOCTRINE. 



265 



soul in the inarticulate speech of an earnest, pure, and 
truthful life, and this will be a language which the 
profoundest must admire, while the simplest can ap- 
preciate. The most elaborate discourse on sanctifica- 
tion will prove tame and ineffective in comparison with 
the eloquence of a humble, holy walk with God. In 
the spectacle of a penitent soul pouring forth the 
broken utterance of its contrition at the Saviour's feet, 
there is a nobler sermon on repentance than eloquent 
lips ever spoke. Instruct your children in the know- 
ledge of God's great love and mercy, but let them see 
that love cheering, animating, hallowing your daily 
life ; describe to them the divinity and glory of the 
Saviour's person and work, but let them note how daily 
you think of Him, hear with what profoundest rever- 
ence you name His name, see how the sense of a divine 
presence sheds a reflected moral beauty around your 
own — and this will be a living and breathing theology 
to them, without which formal teaching will avail but 
little. Sermons and speeches, too, may weary; they 
may be listened to with irksomeness, and remembered 
with effort : but living speech never tires ; it makes 
no formal demand on the attention, it goes forth in 
feelings and emanations that win their way insensibly 
into the secret depths of the soul. The medium of 
verbal instruction, moreover, is conventional, and it can 
be understood only where one special form of speech 
is vernacular, but the language of action and life is in- 
stinctive and universal. The living epistle needs no 
translation to be understood in every country and 
clime ; a noble act of heroism or self- sacrifice speaks 



266 



SER3I0N XI. 



to the common heart of humanity; a humble, gentle, 
holy, Christlike life preaches to the common ear all 
the world over. There is no speech nor language in 
which this voice is not heard, and its words go forth 
to the world's end. 

Consider, again, that the language of the life is more 
convincing than the language of the lip. It is not 
ideal or theoretical, it is real and practical ; and whilst 
theories and doctrines may he disputed, and only in- 
volve the learner in inextricable confusion, a single 
unmistakable fact, if you can appeal to it, cuts the 
knot, and sets discussion at rest. There is, for instance, 
a secret feeling amongst many who listen to an earnest 
and high-toned style of instruction, that much of what 
they hear, however fine and elevated, and proper to be 
spoken in the pulpit, is far too seraphic to be reduced 
to practice amidst the plain and prosaic business of life. 
Exhortations to communion with God, to spirituality, 
heavenly - mindedness, superiority to the world, its 
vanities and temptations — how often, for any practical 
purpose, do these fall powerless on men's ears. To a 
plain man of the world, steeped in its vulgar cares, 
struggling with its gross and familiar difficulties and 
trials, the delineations of the pulpit seem not seldom 
as if they belonged to a region of pietistic romance, a 
sort of spiritual dream-land, in which ministers and 
writers little acquainted with the world permit their 
pious imagination to revel. The theory is a fine one, 
they admit, but constituted as poor human nature is, 
there is this inseparable objection to it, that it will not 
work. 



CHARACTER AND DOCTRINE. 



267 



But in this, as in many other cases, experiment will 
be the test of truth. Men may dispute your theory 
of agriculture, and explanation or discussion might 
only serve to confirm them in their error ; but show 
them, rugged though be the soil and ungenial the 
climate, your fair and abundant crops, and objection 
is silenced. Your system of education may be contro- 
verted or contemned as impracticable, but point to the 
undeniable results of your system in the intelligence, i 
worth, high principle of those w^ho, year after year, 1 
issue from your schools, and this argument will be 
unanswerable. The invaluable scientific discovery or 
project may be met by a thousand objections when 
first announced, but when it has bridged the ocean, or 
spread its network of intercommunication over the 
land, the most sceptical are forced to own their error. 
So, in the case before us, the ideal of the Christian life, 
with all its moral elevation and superiority to common 
motives and principles, may seem to many at best but 
a beautiful and pious fancy, too delicate and fine-spun 
for the rough uses of life ; but apply to it the test of 
experiment — reduce the ideal to the actual — show in 
positive experience that it is possible to bring the 
loftiest spiritual motives into contact with the lowliest 
duties, — and your conception of a religious life will be 
proved beyond dispute. Let not worldly selfishness 
take refuge in scepticism as to the possibility of a life 
so pure, so high-toned, so self-denied. Show that such 
a life is not only desirable but practicable — not merely 
that it ought to be, but that it can be. Live down 
doubt. Let men feel as they behold your earnest, 



268 



SERMON XI. 



sincere, unselfish life, that God, and truth, and duty, 
and Christ, and immortality, are not the mere themes 
of a preacher's discourse, the topics of a Sunday medi- 
tation, but the real and practical principles and motives 
of man's working life. So doing you will silence the 
gainsayer, and the spurious sagacity of the worldly- 
minded will be completely at fault. 

Consider, finally, that the teaching of the life is 
available in many cases in which the teaching of the 
lip cannot, or ought not, to be attempted. There are 
many conceivable circumstances in which a man is 
disqualified from doing good to others by" direct in- 
struction or advice. Many, for instance, are incapable 
of expressing their sentiments clearly and forcibly in 
words, or are unwilling to peril questions so momentous 
as those of religion on their own feeble advocacy. 
Many, again, are unable to overcome a certain instinc- 
tive reserve on religious topics, a painful shrinking 
from the introduction in their intercourse with others 
of matters so awful and sacred ; and though this is a 
disposition which may easily be indulged till it has 
become a false delicacy, a reprehensible remissness or 
selfish timidity, yet it cannot be denied that it is often 
the deepest natures that are the calmest and quietest, 
and the profoundest emotions of the heart that shrink 
most from outward expression. It is true that " out 
of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh ; 99 but 
it is not less true that there are sometimes things we 
love and reverence so much that we cannot bear to 
speak of them. And even where no such disqualifica- 
tions exist on the side of the instructor, there may be 



CHARACTER AND DOCTRINE. 



269 



that in the temper of the objects of his religious zeal, 
which would be repelled rather than benefited by 
formal admonition, or that in their position relatively 
to him which would render the attitude of the in- 
structor or adviser presumptuous and unbecoming. 
There are few who can take in good part ghostly 
counsel or personal reproof. The utterer of mrwelcome 
truth is not always discriminated from the slanderer 
who delights in it. The bearer of bad news becomes 
associated in our dislike with the message he brings ; 
and our pride is wounded all the more by his strictures 
if the position of the censor lends no authority to his 
counsels, or positively detracts from their force. 

But in all cases in which formal instruction or advice 
is precluded, how invaluable that other mode of access 
to the minds of men on which we are now insisting — 
the silent, unobtrusive, inoffensive, yet most potent and 
persuasive teaching of the life. The counsel you may 
not speak you may yet embody in action. To the 
faults and sins you cannot notice in words, you may 
hold up the mirror of a life bright with purity and 
goodness and grace. The mind which no force of 
rebuke could drive from sin, may yet be insensibly 
drawn from it by the attractive power of holiness ever 
acting in its presence. So that " they who obey not 
the word, may without the word be won by your 
chaste conversation coupled with fear." 

Is it, for instance, gross and degrading vice which it 
pains you to witness in another's life 1 ? Then evade 
not, through false delicacy, the duty of firm and 
earnest remonstrance. But if remonstrance be impos- 



270 



SERMON XI. 



sible, there is another and often more potent mode of 
expostulation ; for there are times when the very look 
of purity is the keenest of all reproofs. Even from 
the majestic serenity of material nature there are 
moments when the perturbed and polluted spirit will 
avert its troubled glance ; and the bright happy inno- 
cent countenance of a little child, or its air of reveren- 
tial awe and simplicity as it falters out its evening 
prayer at a mother s knee, has conveyed to the guilty 
heart a more overwhelming rebuke than human tongue 
could utter. 

Or is it wayward harshness or sullenness of temper 
that is the prominent defect in one who is dear to you? 
Who knows not that words of reproof, however gently 
administered, would often but add fuel to the fire of 
such a spirit 1 But there is another and more excellent 
way of admonition, which will seldom, if ever, fail. 
Rebuke by love, remonstrate by gentleness, preach 
self-restraint by living it. Exhibit the softening power 
of Christ's grace — not by talking about it, but by 
acting in habitual subjection to it ; by your sweet, 
gentle, Christ-like temper and bearing, by your return 
of kindness for harshness, by your calm forbearance 
and unruffled serenity amidst sore provocations and 
wrongs : and oftentimes you will find that the spirit 
whose false pride direct remonstrance would only serve 
to rouse, will own unconsciously the all -subduing 
power of love. 

Or is it not so much special faults and sins, as a 
general indifference to religion, which it grieves you 
to witness in the character and conduct of a friend 1 



CHARACTER AND DOCTRINE. 



271 



Then in this case too, if reasoning or remonstrance be 
possible, let not the painfulness of the task tempt you 
to cowardly silence. A brother's life is at stake, a 
brother's step is trembling on the awful brink, and 
will you not, for his truer good, brave his transient 
displeasure 1 There are times when tenderness is more 
cruel than harshness — reserve more criminal than 
savage barbarity ; and surely of all such occasions this 
is the one on which most of all a true friend should 
feel himself impelled to throw false shame aside, and 
manfully to speak out. But here, too, where words 
may not be spoken, or if spoken, would be uttered in 
vain, another resource is open to you : — rpreach by the 
life. Let your daily life be an unuttered yet perpetual 
pleading with man for God. Let men feel, in contact 
with you, the grandeur of that religion to whose 
claims they will not listen, and the glory of that 
Saviour whose name you may not name. Let the 
sacredness of God's slighted law be proclaimed by your 
uniform sacrifice of inclination to duty, by your repres- 
sion of every unkind word, your scorn of every undue 
or base advantage, your stern and uncompromising 
resistance to the temptations of appetite and sense. 
Preach the preciousness of time by your husbanding 
of its rapid hours, and your crowding of its days with 
duties. Though Eternity with its fast -approaching 
realities be a forbidden topic to the ear, constrain the 
unwilling mind to think of it by the spectacle of a life 
ordered with perpetual reference to hopes and destinies 
beyond the grave. Though no warning against an 
unspiritual, no exhortation to a holy life, might be 



272 



SERMON XL 



tolerated, let your own pure, earnest, unworldly char- 
acter and bearing be to the careless soul a perpetual 
atmosphere of spirituality haunting and hovering 
round it. And, be assured, the moral influence of ' 
such a life cannot be lost. Like the seed which the 
wind wafts into hidden glades and forest depths, where 
no sower's hand could reach to scatter it, the subtle 
germ of Christ's truth will be borne on the secret at- 
mosphere of a holy life, into hearts which no preacher's 
voice could penetrate. Where the tongue of men and 
of angels would fail, there is an eloquence in living 
goodness which will often prove persuasive. For it is 
an inoffensive, unpretending, unobtrusive eloquence; 
it is the eloquence of the soft sunshine when it expands 
the close-shut leaves and blossoms — a rude hand would 
but tear and crush them ; it is the eloquence of the 
summer heat when it basks upon the thick-ribbed ice 
— blows would but break it ; but beneath that softest, 
gentlest, yet most potent influence, the hard impene- 
trable masses melt away. 



SERMON XII. 



RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE. 

" Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord." — 
Romans, xii. 11. 

To combine business with religion, to keep up a spirit 
of serious piety amidst the stir and distraction of a 
busy and active life, — this is one of the most difficult 
parts of a Christian's trial in this world. It is com- 
paratively easy to be religious in the church — to 
collect our thoughts and compose our feelings, and 
enter, with an appearance of propriety and decorum, 
into the offices of religious worship, amidst the 
quietude of the Sabbath, and within the still and 
sacred precincts of the house of prayer. But to be 
religious in the world — to be pious and holy and 
earnest -minded in the counting-room, the manufac- 
tory, the market-place, the field, the farm— to carry 
out our good and solemn thoughts and feelings into 
the throng and thoroughfare of daily life, — this is the 
great difficulty of our Christian calling, No man not 
lost to all moral influence can help feeling his worldly 
s 



274 



SERMON XII. 



passions calmed, and some measure of seriousness 
stealing over his mind, when engaged in the perform- 
ance of the more awful and sacred rites of religion ; 
but the atmosphere of the domestic circle, the ex- 
change, the street, the city's throng, amidst coarse 
work and cankering cares and toils, is a very differ- 
ent atmosphere from that of a communion-table. 
Passing from the one to the other has often seemed 
as if the sudden transition from a tropical to a polar 
climate — from balmy warmth and sunshine to murky 
mist and freezing cold. And it appears sometimes as 
difficult to maintain the strength and steadfastness of 
religious principle and feeling when we go forth from 
the church into the world, as it would be to preserve 
an exotic alive in the open air in winter, or to keep 
the lamp that burns steadily within doors from being 
blown out if you take it abroad unsheltered from the 
wind. 

So great, so all but insuperable, has this difficulty 
ever appeared to men, that it is but few who set them- 
selves honestly and resolutely to the effort to over- 
come it. The great majority, by various shifts or 
expedients, evade the hard task of being good and 
holy at once in the church and in the world. 

In ancient times, for instance, it was, as we all 
know, the not uncommon expedient among devout 
persons — men deeply impressed with the thought of 
an eternal world and the necessity of preparing for it, 
but distracted by the effort to attend to the duties of 
religion amidst the business and temptations of secular 
life — to fly the world altogether, and, abandoning 



RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE. 



275 



society and all social claims, to betake themselves to 
some hermit solitude, some quiet and cloistered retreat, 
where, as they fondly deemed, " the world forgetting, 
by the world forgot," their work would become wor- 
ship, and life be uninterruptedly devoted to the culti- 
vation of religion in the soul. In our own day the 
more common device, where religion and the world 
conflict, is not that of the superstitious recluse, but 
one even much less safe and venial. Keen for this 
world, yet not willing to lose all hold on the next- 
eager for the advantages of time, yet not prepared to 
abandon all religion and stand by the consequences, 
there is a very numerous class who attempt to com- 
promise the matter — to treat religion and the world 
like two creditors whose claims cannot both be liqui- 
dated, by compounding with each for a share — though 
in this case a most disproportionate share — of their 
time and thought. " Everything in its own place ! " 
is the tacit reflection of such men. " Prayers, sermons, 
holy reading" — they will scarcely venture to add 
" God " — " are for Sundays ; but week-days are for 
the sober business, the real, practical affairs of life. 
Enough if we give the Sunday to our religious duties ; 
we cannot be always praying and reading the Bible. 
Well enough for clergymen and good persons who 
have nothing else to do, to attend to religion through 
the week ; but for us, we have other and more prac- 
tical matters to mind." And so the result is, that 
religion is made altogether a Sunday thing — a robe 
too fine for common wear, but taken out solemnly on 
state occasions, and solemnly put past when the state 



276 



SERMON XII. 



occasion is over. Like an idler in a crowded thorough- 
fare, religion is jostled aside in the daily throng of 
life, as if it had no business there. Like a needful 
yet disagreeable medicine, men will be content to take 
it now and then, for their soul's health ; but they 
cannot, and will not, make it their daily fare — the sub- 
stantial and staple nutriment of their life. 

Now, you will observe that the idea of religion w T hich 
is set forth in the text, as elsewhere in Scripture, is 
quite different from any of these notions. The text 
speaks as if the most diligent attention to our worldly 
business were not by any means incompatible with 
spirituality of mind and serious devotion to the service 
of God. It seems to imply that religion is not so 
much a duty, as a something that has to do with all 
duties — not a tax to be paid periodically and got rid of 
at other times, but a ceaseless, all-pervading, inexhaus- 
tible tribute to Him who is not only the object of 
religious worship, but the end of our very life and 
being. It suggests to us the idea that piety is not for 
Sundays only, but for all days ; that spirituality of 
mind is not appropriate to one set of actions and an 
impertinence and intrusion with reference to others, 
but, like the act of breathing, like the circulation of 
the blood, like the silent growth of the stature, a pro- 
cess that may be going on simultaneously with all our 
actions — when we are busiest as when we are idlest ; 
in the church, in the world; in solitude, in society; in 
our grief and in our gladness ; in our toil and in our 
rest ; sleeping, waking ; by day, by night — amidst all 
the engagements and exigencies of life. For you per- 



RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE. 



277 



ceive that in one breath — as duties not only not incom- 
patible, but necessarily and inseparably blended with 
each other— the text exhorts us to be at once "not 
slothful in business/ 1 and "fervent in spirit, serving 
the Lord." — I shall now attempt to prove and illustrate 
the idea thus suggested to us — the compatibility of 
Eeligion with the business of Common Life. 

We have, then, Scripture .authority for asserting that 
it is not impossible to live a life of fervent piety 
amidst the most engrossing pursuits and engagements 
of the world. We are to make good this conception of 
life, — that the hardest- wrought man of trade, or com- 
merce, or handicraft, who spends his days " midst 
dusky lane or wrangling mart/' may yet be the most 
holy and spiritually-minded. We need not quit the 
world and abandon its busy pursuits in order to live 
near to God ; — 

" We need not bid, for cloistered cell, 
Our neighbour and our work farewell : 
The trivial round, the common task, 
May furnish all we ought to ask, — 
Room to deny ourselves, a road 
To bring us, daily, nearer God. " 

It is true indeed that, if in no other way could we pre- 
pare for an eternal world than by retiring from the 
business and cares of this world, so momentous are the 
interests involved in religion, that no wise man should 
hesitate to submit to the sacrifice. Life here is but a 
span. Life hereafter is for ever. A lifetime of soli- 
tude, hardship, penury, were all too slight a price to 
pay, if need be, for an eternity of bliss : and the results 



278 



SERMON XII. 



of our most incessant toil and application to the world's 
business, conld they secure for us the highest prizes of 
earthly ambition, would be purchased at a tremendous 
cost, if they stole away from us the only time in which 
we could prepare to meet our God, — if they left us at 
last rich, gay, honoured, possessed of everything the 
world holds dear, but to face an Eternity undone. If, 
therefore, in no way could you combine business and 
religion, it would indeed be, not fanaticism, but most 
sober wisdom and prudence, to let the world's business 
come to a stand. It would be the duty of the 
mechanic, the man of business, the statesman, the 
scholar — men of every secular calling — without a 
moment's delay to leave vacant and silent the familiar 
scenes of their toils — to turn life into a perpetual 
Sabbath, and betake themselves, one and all, to an ex- 
istence of ceaseless prayer, and unbroken contemplation, 
and devout care of the soul. 

But the very impossibility of such a sacrifice proves 
that no such sacrifice is demanded. He who rules 
the world is no arbitrary tyrant prescribing impracti- 
cable labours. In the material world there are no 
conflicting laws ; and no more, we may rest assured, 
are there established, in the moral world, any two 
laws, one or other of which must needs be disobeyed. 
Now one thing is certain, that there is in the moral 
world a law of labour. Secular work, in all cases a 
duty, is, in most cases, a necessity. God might have 
made us independent of work. He might have 
nourished us like " the fowls of the air and the lilies 
of the field," which " toil not, neither do they spin." 



RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE. 



279 



He might have rained down our daily food, like the 
manna of old, from heaven, or caused nature to yield 
it in unsolicited profusion to all, and so set us free to 
a life of devotion. But forasmuch as He has not 
done so — forasmuch as He has so constituted us that 
without work we cannot eat, that if men ceased for 
a single day to labour, the machinery of life would 
come to a stand, an arrest be laid on science, civilisa- 
tion, social progress — on everything that is conducive 
to the welfare of man in the present life, — we may 
safely conclude that religion, which is also good for 
man, which is indeed the supreme good of man, 
is not inconsistent with hard work. It must undoubt- 
edly be the design of our gracious God that all this 
toil for the supply of our physical necessities — this 
incessant occupation amid the things that perish, 
shall be no obstruction, but rather a help, to our 
spiritual life. The weight of a clock seems a heavy 
drag on the delicate movements of its machinery ; but 
so far from arresting or impeding those movements, it 
is indispensable to their steadiness, balance, accuracy : 
there must be some analogous action of what seems 
the clog and drag- weight of worldly work on the finer 
movements of man's spiritual being. The planets in 
the heavens have a twofold motion, in their orbits and 
on their axes, — the one motion not interfering, but 
carried on simultaneously, and in perfect harmony, 
with the other : so must it be that man's twofold 
activities — round the heavenly and the earthly centre, 
disturb not, nor jar with, each other. He who dili- 
gently discharges the duties of the earthly, may not 



280 



SER3ION XII. 



less sedulously — nay at the same moment — fulfil those 
of the heavenly, sphere ; at once " diligent in business," 
and " fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." 

And that this is so — that this blending of religion 
with the work of common life is not impossible, you 
will readily perceive, if you consider for a moment 
what, according to the right and proper notion of it, 
Eeligion is. What do we mean by " Eeligion % 31 

Eeligion may be viewed in two aspects. It is a 
Science, and it is an Art ; in other words, a system of 
doctrines to be believed, and a system of duties to be 
done. View it in either light, and the point we are 
insisting on may, without difficulty, be made good. 
View it as a Science— -as truth to be understood and 
believed. If religious truth were, like many kinds of 
secular truth, hard, intricate, abstruse, demanding for 
its study, not only the highest order of intellect, but 
all the resources of education, books, learned leisure, 
then indeed, to most men, the blending of religion with 
the necessary avocations of life would be an impossi- 
bility. In that case it would be sufficient excuse for 
irreligion to plead, " My lot in life is inevitably one of 
incessant care and toil, of busy, anxious thought and 
wearing work. Inextricably involved, every day and 
hour as I am, in the world's business, how is it possible 
for me to devote myself to this high and abstract 
science ?" If religion were thus, like the higher 
mathematics or metaphysics, a science based on the 
most recondite and elaborate reasonings, capable of 
being mastered only by the acutest minds, after years 
of study and laborious investigation, then might it well 



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281 



be urged by many an unlettered man of toil, " I am no 
scholar — I have no bead to comprehend these hard 
dogmas and doctrines. Learning and religion are, no 
doubt, fine things, but they are not for humble and 
hard- wrought folk like me ! " In this case, indeed, 
the Gospel would be no Gospel at all — no good news 
of Heavenly love and mercy to the whole sin-ruined 
race of man, but only a Gospel for scholars — a religion, 
like the ancient philosophies, for a scanty minority, 
clever enough to grasp its principles, and set free from 
active business to devote themselves to the develop- 
ment and discussion of its doctrines. 

But the Gospel is no such system of high and abstract 
truth. The salvation it offers is nolr the prize of a lofty 
intellect, but of a lowly heart. The mirror in which 
its grand truths are reflected is not a mind of calm and 
philosophic abstraction, but a heart of earnest purity. 
Its light shines best and fullest, not on a life undis- 
turbed by business, but on a soul unstained by sin. 
The religion of Christ, whilst it affords scope for the 
loftiest intellect in the contemplation and development 
of its glorious truths, is yet, in the exquisite simplicity 
of its essential facts and principles, patent to the 
simplest mind. Eude, untutored, toil-worn you may 
be, but if you have wit enough to guide you in the com- 
monest round of daily toil, you have wit enough to learn 
the way to be saved. The truth as it is in Jesus, whilst, 
in one view of it, so profound that the highest arch- 
angel's intellect may be lost in the contemplation of its 
mysterious depths, is yet, in another, so simple that the 
lisping babe at a mother's knee may learn its meaning. 



282 



SERMON XII. 



Again : View religion as an Art, and, in this light 
too, its compatibility with a busy and active life in the 
world, it will not be difficult to perceive. For religion 
as an art differs from secular arts in this respect, that 
it may be practised simultaneously with other arts — 
with all other work and occupation in which we may 
be engaged. A man cannot be studying architecture 
and law at the same time. The medical practitioner 
cannot be engaged with his patients, and at the same 
time planning houses or building bridges,— practising, 
in other words, both medicine and engineering at one 
and the same moment. The practice of one secular 
art excludes for the time the practice of other secular 
arts. But not so with the art of religion. This is the 
universal art, the common, all-embracing profession. 
It belongs to no one set of functionaries, to no special 
class of men. Statesman, soldier, lawyer, physician, 
poet, painter, tradesman, farmer — men of every craft 
and calling in life — may, while in the actual discharge 
of the duties of their varied avocations, be yet, at the 
same moment, discharging the duties of a higher and 
nobler vocation — practising the art of a Christian. 
Secular arts, in most cases, demand of him who would 
attain to eminence in any one of them, an almost exclus- 
ive devotion of time, and thought, and toil. The most 
versatile genius can seldom be master of more than 
one art ; and for the great majority the only calling 
must be that by which they earn their daily bread. 
Demand of the poor tradesman or peasant, whose every 
hour is absorbed in the struggle to earn a competency 
for himself and his family, that he shall be also a 



RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE. 



283 



thorough proficient in the art of the physician, or law- 
yer, or sculptor, and you demand an impossibility. If 
religion were an art such as these, few indeed could 
learn it. The two admonitions, " Be diligent in busi- 
ness/ 5 and " Be fervent in spirit, serving the Lord," 
would be reciprocally destructive. 

But religion is no such art ; for it is the art of being, 
and of doing, good : to be an adept in it, is to become 
just, truthful, sincere, self-denied, gentle, forbearing, 
pure in word and thought and deed. And the school 
for learning this art is, not the closet, but the world, 
— not some hallowed spot where religion is taught, 
and proficients, when duly trained, are sent forth into 
the world, — but the world itself — the coarse, profane, 
common world, with its cares and temptations, its 
rivalries and competitions, its hourly, ever-recurring 
trials of temper and character. This is, therefore, an 
art which all can practise, and for which every pro- 
fession and calling, the busiest and most absorbing, 
afford scope and discipline. When a child is learning 
to write, it matters not of what words the copy set to 
him is composed, the thing desired being that, what- 
ever he writes, he learn to write ivell. When a man is 
learning to be a Christian, it matters not what his 
particular work in life may be ; the work he does is 
but the copy-line set to him ; the main thing to be 
considered is that he learn to live well. The form is 
nothing, the execution is everything. It is true, indeed, 
that prayer, holy reading, meditation, the solemnities 
and services of the Church, are necessary to religion, 
and that these can be practised only apart from the 



284 



SERMON XII. 



work of secular life. But it is to be remembered that 
all such holy exercises do not terminate in themselves. 
They are but steps in the ladder to heaven, good 
only as they help us to climb. They are the irrigation 
and enriching of the spiritual soil — worse than useless 
if the crop become not more abundant. They are, in 
short, but means to an end — good, only in so far as 
they help us to be good and to do good — to glorify 
God and do good to man ; and that end can perhaps 
best be attained by him whose life is a busy one, 
whose avocations bear him daily into contact with his 
fellows, into the intercourse of society, into the heart 
of the world. No man can be a thorough proficient in 
navigation who has never been at sea, though he may 
learn the theory of it at home. No man can become a 
soldier by studying books on military tactics in his 
closet : he must in actual service acquire those habits 
of coolness, courage, discipline, address, rapid combina- 
tion, without which the most learned in the theory of 
strategy or engineering will be but a schoolboy soldier 
after all. And, in the same way, a man in solitude 
and study may become a most learned theologian, or 
may train himself into the timid, effeminate piety of 
what is technically called "the religious life." But 
never, in the highest and holiest sense, can he become 
a religious man, until he has acquired those habits of 
daily self-denial, of resistance to temptation, of kind- 
ness, gentleness, humility, sympathy, active beneficence, 
w T hich are to be acquired only in daily contact with 
mankind. Tell us not 2 then, that the man of business, 



RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE. 



285 



the bustling tradesman, the toil-worn labourer, has 
little or no time to attend to religion. As well tell us 
that the pilot, amid the winds and storms, has no 
leisure to attend to navigation — or the general, on the 
field of battle, to the art of war ! Where ivill he attend 
to it ? Religion is not a perpetual moping over good 
books — religion is not even prayer, praise, holy ordi- 
nances ; these are necessary to religion — no man can 
be religious without them. But religion, I repeat, is, 
mainly and chiefly the glorifying God amid the duties 
and trials of the world, — the guiding our course amid 
the adverse winds and currents of temptation, by the 
star-light of duty and the compass of divine truth, — 
the bearing us manfully, wisely, courageously, for the 
honour of Christ, our great Leader, in the conflict of 
life. Away then with the notion that ministers and 
devotees may be religious, but that a religious and 
holy life is impracticable in the rough and busy world ! 
Nay rather, believe me, that is the proper scene, the 
peculiar and appropriate field for religion, — the place 
in which to prove that piety is not a dream of Sundays 
and solitary hours ; that it can bear the light of day ; 
that it can wear well amid the rough jostlings, the 
hard struggles, the coarse contacts of common life, — 
the place, in one word, to prove how possible it is for 
a man to be at once " not slothful in business," and 
" fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." 

Another consideration, which I shall adduce in sup- 
port of the assertion that it is not impossible to blend 
religion with the business of common life, is this : that 



286 



sermon xri. 



religion consists, not so much in doing spiritual or 
sacred acts, as in doing secular acts from a sacred or 
spiritual motive. 

There is a very common tendency in onr minds to 
classify actions according to their outward form, rather 
than according to the spirit or motive which pervades 
them. Literature is sometimes arbitrarily divided 
into "sacred" and "profane" literature, history into 
"sacred" and "profane" history, — in which classifica- 
tion the term " profane " is applied, not to what is bad 
or unholy, but to everything that is not technically 
sacred or religious — to all literature that does not treat 
of religious doctrines and duties, and to all history save 
church history. And we are very apt to apply the 
same principle to actions. Thus, in many pious minds 
there is a tendency to regard all the actions of common 
life as so much, by an unfortunate necessity, lost to 
religion. Prayer, the reading of the Eible and devo- 
tional books, public worship — and buying, selling, 
digging, sowing, bartering, money-making, are separ- 
ated into two distinct, and almost hostile, categories. 
The religious heart and sympathies are thrown entirely 
into the former, and the latter are barely tolerated as a 
bondage incident to our fallen state, but almost of 
necessity tending to turn aside the heart from God. 

But what God hath cleansed, w T hy should we call 
common or unclean 1 The tendency in question, though 
founded on right feeling, is surely a mistaken one. 
For it is to be remembered that moral qualities reside 
not in actions, but in the agent who performs them, 
and that it is the spirit or motive from which we do 



RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE. 



287 



any -work that constitutes it base or noble, worldly or 
spiritual, secular or sacred. The actions of an automaton 
may be outwardly the same as those of a moral agent, 
but who attributes to them goodness or badness ] A 
musical instrument may discourse sacred melodies 
better than the holiest lips can sing them, but who 
thinks of commending it for its piety ? It is the same 
with actions as with places. Just as no spot or scene 
on earth is in itself more or less holy than another, but 
the presence of a holy heart may hallow — of a base 
one, desecrate — any place where it dwells ; so with 
actions. Many actions, materially great and noble, 
may yet, because of the spirit that prompts and per- 
vades them, be really ignoble and mean ; and, on the 
other hand, many actions externally mean and lowly, 
may, because of the state of his heart who does them, 
be truly exalted and honourable. It is possible to fill 
the highest station on earth, and go through the actions 
pertaining to it in a spirit that degrades all its dignities, 
and renders all its high and courtly doings essentially 
sordid and vulgar. And it is no mere sentimentality 
to say, that there may dwell in a lowly mechanic's or 
household servant's breast a spirit that dignifies the 
coarsest toils and " renders drudgery divine." Herod 
of old was a slave, though he sat upon a throne ; but 
who will say that the work of that carpenter's shop at 
Nazareth, was not noble and kingly work indeed ! 

And as the mind constitutes high or low, so secular 
or spiritual. A life spent amidst holy things may be 
intensely secular ; a life the most of which is passed in 
the thick and throng of the world, may be holy and 



288 



SERMON XII. 



divine. A minister, for instance, preaching, praying, 
ever speaking holy words and performing sacred acts, 
may be all the while doing actions no more holy than 
those of the printer who prints Bibles, or of the book- 
seller who sells them; for, in both cases alike, the 
whole affair may be nothing more than a trade. ]STay, 
the comparison tells worse for the former, for the secu- 
lar trade is innocent and commendable, but the trade 
which traffics and tampers with holy things is, beneath 
all its mock solemnity, "earthly, sensual, devilish." 
So, to adduce one other example, the public worship 
of God is holy work : no man can be living a holy life 
who neglects it. But the public worship of God may 
be — and with multitudes who frequent our churches 
is — degraded into work most worldly, most unholy, 
most distasteful to the great Object of our homage. 
He " to whom all hearts be open, all desires known," 
discerns how many of you have come hither to-day 
from the earnest desire to hold communion with the 
Father of Spirits, to open your hearts to Him, to un- 
burden yourselves in his loving presence of the cares 
and crosses that have been pressing hard upon you 
through the past week, and by common prayer and 
praise, and the hearing of His holy Word, to gain fresh 
incentive and energy for the prosecution of His work 
in the world ; and how many, on the other hand, from 
no better motive, perhaps, than curiosity or old habit, 
or regard to decency and respectability, or the mere 
desire to get rid of yourselves, and pass a vacant hour 
that would hang heavy on your hands. And who can 
doubt that, where such motives as these prevail, to the 



RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE. 



289 



piercing, unerring inspection of Him whom outwardly 
we seem to reverence, not the market-place, the ex- 
change, the counting-room appears a place more in- 
tensely secular — not the most reckless and riotous 
festivity, a scene of more unhallowed levity, than is 
presented by the House of Prayer 1 

But, on the other hand, carry holy principles with 
you into the world, and the world will become hallowed 
by their presence. A Christ-like spirit will Christian- 
ise everything it touches. A meek heart, in which 
the altar-fire of love to God is burning, will lay hold 
of the commonest, rudest things in life, and transmute 
them, like coarse fuel at the touch of fire, into a pure 
and holy flame. Eeligion in the soul will make all the 
work and toil of life — its gains and losses, friendships, 
rivalries, competitions — its manifold incidents and 
events— the means of religious advancement. Marble 
or coarse clay, it matters not much with which of these 
the artist works, the touch of genius transforms the 
coarser material into beauty, and lends to the finer a 
value it never had before. Lofty or lowly, rude or 
refined, as our earthly work may be, it will become to 
a holy mind only the material for an infinitely nobler 
than all the creations of genius — a pure and godlike 
life. To spiritualise what is material, to Christianise 
what is secular — this is the noble achievement of 
Christian principle. If you are a sincere Christian, it 
will be your great desire, by God's grace, to bring every 
gift, talent, occupation of life, every word you speak, 
every action you do, under the control of Christian 
motive. Your conversation may not always — nay, may 



290 



SERMON XII. 



seldom, save with intimate friends — consist of formally 
religious words ; you may perhaps shrink from the 
introduction of religious topics in general society : but 
it demands a less amount of Christian effort occasion- 
ally to speak religious words, than to infuse the spirit 
of religion into all our words ; and if the whole tenor 
of your common talk be pervaded by a spirit of piety, 
gentleness, earnestness, sincerity, it will be Christian 
conversation not the less. If God has endowed you 
with intellectual gifts, it may be well if you directly 
devote them to His service in the religious instruction 
of others ; but a man may be a Christian thinker and 
writer as much when giving to science, or history, or 
biography, or poetry, a Christian tone and spirit, as 
when composing sermons or writing hymns. To pro- 
mote the cause of Christ directly, by furthering every 
religious and missionary enterprise at home and abroad, 
is undoubtedly your duty; but remember that your 
duty terminates not when you have done all this, for 
you may promote Christ's cause even still more effec- 
tually when in your daily demeanour — in the family, 
in society, in your business transactions, in all your 
common intercourse with the world, you are diffusing 
the influence of Christian principle around you by 
the silent eloquence of a holy life. Eise superior, in 
Christ's strength, to all equivocal practices and advan- 
tages in trade ; shrink from every approach to mean- 
ness or dishonesty; let your eye, fixed on a reward 
before which earthly wealth grows dim, beam with 
honour ; let the thought of God make you self- 
. restrained, temperate, watchful over speech and con- 



RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE. 



291 



duct ; let the abiding sense of Christ's redeeming love 
to you make you gentle, self-denied, kind, and loving 
to all around you; — then indeed will your secular 
life become spiritualised, whilst, at the same time, your 
spiritual life will grow more fervent ; then not only 
will your prayers become more devout, but when the 
knee bends not, and the lip is silent, the life in its 
heavenward tone will " pray without ceasing ; " then 
from amidst the roar and din of earthly toil the ear 
of God will hear the sweetest anthems rising ; then, 
finally, will your daily experience prove that it is no 
high and unattainable elevation of virtue, but a simple 
and natural thing, to which the text points, w T hen it 
bids us be both " diligent in business " and " fervent 
in spirit, serving the Lord." 

As a last illustration of the possibility of blending 
religion with the business of common life, let me call 
your attention to what may be described as the Mind's 
poiver of acting on Latent Principles. 

In order to live a religious life in the world, every 
action must be governed by religious motives. But in 
making this assertion, it is not by any means implied 
that in all the familiar actions of our daily life religion 
must form a direct and conscious object of thought. 
To be always thinking of God, and Christ, and Eternity 
amidst our worldly work, and, however busy, eager, 
interested we may be in the special business before us, 
to have religious ideas, doctrines, beliefs, present to 
the mind, — this is simply impossible. The mind can 
no more consciously think of heaven and earth at the 
same moment than the body can be in heaven and 



292 



SERMON XII. 



earth, at the same moment. Moreover there are few- 
kinds of work in the world that, to be done well, must 
not be done heartily, many that require, in order to 
excellence, the whole condensed force and energy of 
the highest mind. 

But though it be true that we cannot, in our worldly 
work, be always consciously thinking of religion, yet it 
is also true that unconsciously, insensibly, we may be 
acting under its ever-present control. As there are 
laws and powers in the natural world of which, without 
thinking of them, we are ever availing ourselves, — as I 
do not think of gravitation when I move my limbs, or 
of atmospheric laws when, by means of them, I breathe, 
so in the routine of daily work, though comparatively 
seldom do I think of them, I may yet be constantly 
swayed by the motives, sustained by the principles, 
living, breathing, acting in the invisible atmosphere of 
true religion. There are under-currents in the ocean 
which act independently of the movements of the 
waters on the surface ; far down too in its hidden 
depths there is a region where, even though the storm 
be raging on the upper waves, perpetual calmness and 
stillness reign. So there may be an under-current 
beneath the surface-movements of your life — there may 
dwell in the secret depths of your being the abiding 
peace of God, the repose of a holy mind, even though, 
all the while, the restless stir and commotion of worldly 
business may mark your outer history. 

And, in order to see this, it is to be remembered, 
that many of the thoughts and motives that most 
powerfully impel and govern us in the common actions 



RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE. 



293 



of life, are latent thoughts and motives. Have yon not 
often experienced that curious law — a law, perhaps, 
contrived by God with an express view to this its 
highest application — by which a secret thought or 
feeling may lie brooding in your mind, quite apart 
from the particular work in which you happen to be 
employed ] Have you never, for instance, while reading 
aloud, carried along with you in your reading the secret 
impression of the presence of the listener — an impres- 
sion that kept pace with all the mind's activity in the 
special work of reading ; nay, have you not sometimes 
felt the mind, while prosecuting without interruption 
the work of reading, yet at the same time carrying on 
some other train of reflection apart altogether from 
that suggested by the book ? Here is obviously a par- 
ticular " business " in which you were " diligent," yet 
another and different thought to which the "spirit" 
turned. Or, think of the work in which I am this 
moment occupied. Amidst all the mental exertions of 
the public speaker — underneath the outward workings 
of his mind, so to speak, there is the latent thought of 
the presence of his auditory. Perhaps no species of 
exertion requires greater concentration of thought or 
undividedness of attention than this : and yet, amidst 
all the subtle processes of intellect, — the excogitation 
or recollection of ideas, — the selection, right ordering 
and enunciation of words, there never quits his mind 
for one moment the idea of the presence of the listen- 
ing throng. Like a secret atmosphere, it surrounds 
and bathes his spirit as he goes on with the external 
work. And have not you too, my friends, an Auditor 



294 



SERMON XII. 



— it may be a "great cloud of witnesses," — but at 
least one all-glorious Witness and Listener ever present, 
ever watchful, as the discourse of life proceeds 1 Why- 
then, in this case too, while the outward business is 
diligently prosecuted, may there not be on your spirit 
a latent and constant impression of that awful inspec- 
tion 1 What worldly work so absorbing as to leave no 
room in a believer's spirit for the hallowing thought of 
that glorious Presence ever near ? Do not say that you 
do not see God — that the presence of the divine Auditor 
is not forced upon your senses as that of the human 
auditory on the speaker. For the same process goes on 
in the secret meditations as in the public addresses of 
the preacher — the same latent reference to those who 
shall listen to his words dwells in his mind when in 
his solitary retirement he thinks and writes, as when 
he speaks in their immediate presence. And surely if 
the thought of an earthly auditory — of human minds 
and hearts that shall respond to his thoughts and words 
— can intertwine itself with all the activities of a man's 
mind, and flash back inspiration on his soul, at least as 
potent and as penetrating may the thought be, of Him, 
the Great Lord of heaven and earth, who not only sees 
and knows us now, but before whose awful presence, in 
the last great congregation, we shall stand forth to 
recount and answer for our every thought and deed. 

Or, to take but one other example, have we not all 
felt that the thought of anticipated happiness may 
blend itself with the work of our busiest hours ? The 
labourer's evening release from toil — the schoolboy's 
coming holiday, or the hard -wrought business-man's 



RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE. 



295 



approaching season of relaxation — the expected return 
of a long absent and much loved friend — is not the 
thought of these, or similar joyous events, one which 
often intermingles with, without interrupting, our 
common work? "When a father goes forth to his 
" labour till the evening," perhaps often, very often, in 
the thick of his toils, the thought of home may start 
up to cheer him. The smile that is to welcome him, 
as he crosses his lowly threshold when the work of 
the day is over, the glad faces, and merry voices, and 
sweet caresses of little ones, as they shall gather round 
him in the quiet evening hours — the thought of all 
this may dwell, a latent joy, a hidden motive, deep 
down in his heart of hearts, may come rushing in a 
sweet solace at every pause of exertion, and act like a 
secret oil to smooth the wheels of labour. And so, in 
the other cases I have named, even when our outward 
activities are the most strenuous, even when every 
energy of mind and body is full strung for work, the 
anticipation of coming happiness may never be absent 
from our minds. The heart has a secret treasury, 
where our hopes and joys are often garnered — too pre- 
cious to be parted with even for a moment. 

And why may not the highest of all hopes and joys 
possess the same all-pervading influence 1 Have we, if 
our religion be real, no anticipation of happiness in the 
glorious future 1 Is there no " rest that remaineth for 
the people of God/' no home and loving heart awaiting 
us when the toils of our hurried day of life are ended ] 
What is earthly rest or relaxation, what that release 
from toil after which we so often sigh, but the faint 



296 



SERMON XII. 



shadow of the saint's everlasting rest — the repose of 
eternal purity — the calm of a spirit in which, not the 
tension of labour only, but the strain of the moral 
strife with sin, has ceased — the rest of the soul in 
God ! What visions of earthly bliss can ever — if 
our Christian faith be not a form — compare with " the 
glory soon to be revealed" — what joy of earthly re- 
union with the rapture of the hour when the heavens 
shall yield our absent Lord to our embrace, to be 
parted from us no more for ever ! And if all this be 
not a dream and a fancy, but most sober truth, what 
is there to except this joyful hope from that law to 
which, in all other deep joys, our minds are subject % 
Why may we not, in this case too, think often, amidst 
our worldly work, of the Home to which we are going, 
of the true and loving heart that beats for us, and of 
the sweet and joyous welcome that awaits us there] 
And even when we make them not, of set purpose, the 
subject of our thoughts, is there not enough of grandeur 
in the objects of a believer's hope to pervade his spirit 
at all times with a calm and reverential joy ? Do not 
think all this strange, fanatical, impossible. If it do 
seem so, it can only be because your heart is in the 
earthly hopes, but not in the higher and holier hopes 
— because love to Christ is still to you but a name— 
because you can give more ardour of thought to the 
anticipation of a coming holiday than to the hope of 
heaven and glory everlasting. No, my friends ! the 
strange thing is, not that amidst the world's work we 
should be able to think of our Home, but that we 
should ever be able to forget it; and the stranger, 



RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE. 



297 



sadder still, that while the little day of life is passing, 
— morning — noontide — evening, — each stage more 
rapid than the last, while to many the shadows are 
already fast lengthening, and the declining sun warns 
them that "the night is at hand, wherein no man can 
work," there should he those amongst us whose whole 
thoughts are ahsorhed in the business of the world, and 
to whom the reflection never occurs that soon they 
must go out into eternity — without a friend — without 
a home ! 

Such, then, is the true idea of the Christian life — a 
life not of periodic observances, or of occasional fer- 
vours, or even of splendid acts of heroism and self- 
devotion, but of quiet, constant, unobtrusive earnest- 
ness, amidst the commonplace work of the world. 
This is the life to which Christ calls us. Is it yours ? 
Have you entered upon it, or are you now willing to 
enter upon it % It is not, I admit, an imposing or an 
easy one. There is nothing in it to dazzle, much in 
its hardness and plainness to deter the irresolute. The 
life of a follower of Christ demands not, indeed, in our 
day, the courage of the hero or the martyr, the forti- 
tude that braves outward dangers and sufferings, and 
flinches not from persecution and death. But with 
the age of persecution the difficulties of the Christian 
life have not passed away. In maintaining, in the 
unambitious routine of humble duties, a spirit of Chris- 
tian cheerfulness and contentment — in preserving the 
fervour of piety amidst unexciting cares and wearing 
anxieties — in the perpetual reference to lofty ends 
amidst lowly toils — there may be evinced a faith as 



298 



SERMON XII. 



strong as that of a man who dies with the song of 
martyrdom on his lips. It is a great thing to love 
Christ so dearly as to be " ready to be bound and to 
die " for Him ; but it is often a thing not less great to 
be ready to take up our daily cross, and to live for Him. 

But be the difficulties of a Christian life in the 
world what they may, they need not discourage us. 
Whatever the work to which our Master calls us, He 
offers us a strength commensurate with our needs. No 
man who wishes to serve Christ will ever fail for lack 
of heavenly aid. And it will be no valid excuse for an 
ungodly life that it is difficult to keep alive the flame 
of piety in the world, if Christ be ready to supply the 
fuel. 

To all, then, who really wish to lead such a life, let 
me suggest that the first thing to be done — that 
without which all other efforts are worse than vain — 
is heartily to devote themselves to God through Christ 
Jesus. Much as has been said of the infusion of reli- 
gious principle and motive into our worldly work, 
there is a preliminary advice of greater importance 
still — that we be religious. Life comes before growth. 
The soldier must enlist before he can serve. In vain 
directions how to keep the fire ever burning on the 
altar, if first it be not kindled. No religion can be 
genuine, no goodness can be constant or lasting, that 
springs not, as its primary source, from faith in Jesus 
Christ. To know Christ as my Saviour — to come 
with all my guilt and weakness to Him in whom 
trembling penitence never fails to find a friend — to 
cast myself at His feet in whom all that is subhme in 



RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE. 



299 



divine holiness is softened, though not obscured, by 
all that is beautiful in human tenderness — and, be- 
lieving in that love stronger than death which, for me, 
and such as me, drained the cup of untold sorrows, 
and bore without a murmur the bitter curse of sin, to 
trust my soul for time and eternity into His hands — 
this is the beginning of true religion. And it is the 
reverential love with which the believer mast ever look 
to Him to whom he owes so much, that constitutes the 
mainspring of the religion of daily life. Selfishness may 
prompt to a formal religion, natural susceptibility may 
give rise to a fitful one, but for a life of constant fervent 
piety, amidst the world's cares and toils, no motive is 
sufficient save one — self-devoted love to Christ. 

But again, if you would lead a Christian life in the 
world, let me remind you that that life must be con- 
tinned as well as begun with Christ. You must learn 
to look to Him not merely as your Saviour from 
guilt, but as the Friend of your secret life, the chosen 
Companion of your solitary hours, the Depositary of 
all the deeper thoughts and feelings of your soul. You 
cannot live for Him in the world unless you live much 
with Him, apart from the world. In spiritual as in 
secular things, the deepest and strongest characters 
need much solitude to form them. Even earthly great- 
ness, much more moral and spiritual greatness, is never 
attained but as the result of much that is concealed 
from the world — of many a lonely and meditative 
hour. Thoughtfulness, self-knowledge, self-control, a 
chastened wisdom and piety, are the fruit of habitual 
meditation and prayer. In these exercises Heaven is 



300 



SERMON XII. 



brought near, and our exaggerated estimate of earthly 
things corrected. By these our spiritual energies, 
shattered and worn by the friction of worldly work, 
are repaired. In the recurring seasons of devotion 
the cares and anxieties of worldly business cease to 
vex us; exhausted with its toils, we have, in daily 
communion with God, "meat to eat which the world 
knoweth not of ; " and even when its calamities and 
losses fall upon us, and our portion of worldly good may 
be withdrawn, we may be able to show, like those holy 
ones of old at the heathen court, by the fair serene 
countenance of the spirit, that we have something 
better than the world's pulse to feed upon. 

But, further, in availing yourself of this divine re- 
source amidst the daily exigencies of life, why should 
you wait always for the periodic season and the formal 
attitude of prayer 1 The Heavens are not open to the 
believer's call only at intervals. The grace of God's 
Holy Spirit falls not like the fertilising shower, only 
now and then ; or like the dew on the earth's face, 
only at morning and night. At all times on the up- 
lifted face of the believer's spirit the gracious element 
is ready to descend. Pray always ; pray without 
ceasing. When difficulties arise, delay not to seek and 
obtain at once the succour you need. Swifter than by 
the subtle electric agent is thought borne from earth 
to heaven. The Great Spirit on high is in constant 
sympathy with the believing spirit beneath, and in a 
moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the thrill of 
aspiration flashes from the heart of man to God. 
Whenever anything vexes you — whenever, from the 



RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE. 



301 



rude and selfish ways of men, any trials of temper 
cross your path — when your spirits are ruffled, or your 
Christian forbearance put to the test, be this your in- 
stant resource ! Haste away, if only for a moment, to 
the serene and peace-breathing presence of Jesus, and 
you will not fail to return with a spirit soothed and 
calmed. Or when the impure and low-minded sur- 
round you — when, in the path of duty, the high tone 
of your Christian purity is apt to suffer from baser 
contacts, oh, what relief to lift the heart to Christ ! — 
to rise on the wings of faith — even for one instant to 
breathe the air of that region where the Infinite Purity 
dwells, and then return with a mind steeled against 
temptation, ready to recoil, with the instinctive abhor- 
rence of a spirit that has been beside the Throne, from 
all that is impure and vile. Say not, then, with such 
aid at your command, that religion cannot be brought 
down to Common Life ! 

In conclusion, let me once more urge upon you the 
great lesson on which we have been insisting. Carry 
religious principle into everyday life. Principle elevates 
whatever it touches. Pacts lose all their littleness to 
the mind which brings principle and law to bear upon 
them. The chemist's or geologist's soiled hands are 
no sign of base work ; the coarsest operations of the 
laboratory, the breaking of stones with a hammer, 
cease to be mechanical when intellectual thought and 
principle govern the mind and guide the hands. And 
religious principle is the noblest of all. Bring it to 
bear on common actions and coarse cares, and infinitely 
nobler even than the philosophic or scientific, becomes 



302 SERMON XII. 

the Christian life. Live for Christ in common things, 
and all your work will become priestly work. As in 
the temple of old, it was holy work to hew wood or 
mix oil, because it was done for the altar-sacrifice or 
the sacred lamps ; so all your coarse and common work 
will receive a consecration when done for God's glory, 
by one who is a true priest to His temple. 

Carry religion into common life, and your life will 
be rendered useful as well as noble. There are many 
men who listen incredulously to the high-toned exhor- 
tations of the pulpit ; the religious life there depicted 
is much too seraphic, they think, for this plain and 
prosaic world of ours. Show these men that the pic- 
ture is not a fancy one. Make it a reality. Bring 
religion down from the clouds. Apply to it the infal- 
lible test of experiment ; and, by suffusing your daily 
actions with holy principles, prove that love to God, 
superiority to worldly pleasure, spirituality, holiness, 
heavenly -mindedness, are something more than the 
stock ideas of sermons. 

Carry religious principle into common life, and 
common life will lose its transitoriness. " The world 
passeth away ! " "The things that are seen are tem- 
poral." Soon business with all its cares and anxieties 
— the whole " unprofitable stir and fever of the world " 
— will be to us a thing of the past. But religion does 
something better than sigh and muse over the perish- 
ableness of earthly things ; it finds in them the seed 
of immortality. No work done for Christ perishes. 
No action that helps to mould the deathless mind of a 
saint of God is ever lost. Live for Christ in the world, 



RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE. 



303 



and you carry out with, you into eternity all of the 
results of the world's business that are worth the 
keeping. The river of life sweeps on, but the gold 
grains it held in solution are left behind deposited in 
the holy heart. "The world passeth away, and the 
lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth 
for ever." Every other result of our "diligence in 
business " will soon be gone. You cannot invent any 
mode of exchange between the visible and invisible 
worlds, so that the balance at your credit in the one 
can be transferred, when you migrate from it, to your 
account in the other. Worldly sharpness, acuteness, 
versatility, are not the qualities in request in the world 
to come. The capacious intellect, stored with know- 
ledge, and disciplined into admirable perspicacity, tact, 
worldly wisdom, by a lifetime devoted to politics or 
business, is not, by such attainments, fitted to take a 
higher place among the sons of immortality. The 
honour, fame, respect, obsequious homage that attend 
worldly greatness up to the grave's brink, will not fol- 
low it one step beyond. These advantages are not to 
be despised ; but if these be all that, by the toil of our 
hand, or the sweat of our brow, we have gained, the 
hour is fast coming when we shall discover that we 
have laboured in vain and spent our strength for 
nought. But while these pass, there are other things 
that remain. The world's gains and losses may soon 
cease to affect us, but not the gratitude or the patience, 
the kindness or the resignation, they drew forth from 
our hearts. The world's scenes of business may fade 
on our sight, the noise of its restless pursuits may fall 



304 



SERMON XII. 



no more upon our ear, when we pass to meet our God; 
but not one unselfish thought, not one kind and gentle 
word, not one act of self-sacrificing love done for Jesus' 
sake, in the midst of our common work, but will have 
left an indelible impress on the soul which will go out 
with it to its eternal destiny. So live, then, that this 
may be the result of your labours. So live that your 
work, whether in the Church or in the world, may be- 
come a discipline for that glorious state of being in 
which the Church and the world shall become one, — 
where work shall be worship, and labour shall be rest, 
— where the worker shall never quit the temple, nor the 
worshipper the place of work, because "there is no 
temple therein, but the Lord God Almighty and the 
Lamb are the temple thereof." 



THE END. 



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